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Oliver Carty opt for an Emydex and NAV blended software solution

Oliver Carty was set up in 1960 by Oliver Carty and is now run by his son Ted Carty. Located in Athlone, Co. Roscommon in Ireland, Oliver Carty produce a range of value add retail products for the majority of Ireland’s leading retailers. They are the biggest producer of bacon and rashers in Ireland, and have won numerous awards for their products including Best Organic Meat Product, Super Valu’s Irish Food producer of the year (2011).

Oliver Carty contacted Emydex in early 2011 with a requirement to replace their existing Production Management Software systems supplied by a number of different software companies with a single system to manage their entire production process spread across their two factories. “We operated an amalgamation of three different systems which was extremely slow to use, and gave little in the way of data and reporting” Justin Lennon, Key Accounts manager with Oliver Carty explained. The original systems in place at Oliver Carty’s included an Intake system, a separate warehousing dispatch system and a Scanvaegt system comprising multiple end-of-line box labelling stations.

After a site visit and analysis of their existing systems, Emydex proposed to implement their replacement Production Management system in two initial project phases.

In phase one Emydex’s Warehouse Management system was implemented running in parallel with their existing Intermec dispatch system. After a few days of successful parallel running the Intermec system was switched off. The system was then extended to cover the intake of raw materials and dry goods; together with dry goods and finished goods stock control which allowed the existing Intake system to be removed. The Emydex Warehousing system was integrated to their existing Scanvaegt packing stations to retrieve packing transaction data, as well as interfaced to their in-house financial system to retrieve sales orders, purchase orders as well as master data files such as products, customers, suppliers and depots etc.

Phase 2 of the Emydex implementation covered the replacement of Oliver Carty’s Scanvaegt system with Emydex packing station software, adding new production management functionality including line yield reporting and packing against production orders. “When dealing with the retail sector it is vitally important to be able to give our customers the information they are looking for and to do so quickly. Since we moved to Emydex we have been able to provide an array of information to ourselves and our customers in a matter of seconds. Also the time taken to scan an order has halved” said Justin Lennon

Now that the Emydex implementation has bedded in, Oliver Carty have opted to replace their existing financial system with Microsoft Dynamics NAV financials using Emydex’s recently developed bridging software to NAV (called a NAV granule) built in conjunction with Microsoft NAV gold partner company, Simply Dynamics. “The benefits of implementing NAV with Emydex is NAV can handle variable/catch weights better than most other financial packages on the market, and leaves Oliver Carty scope to extend their NAV system into other areas of the business such as CRM for example”, said David McMahon, CEO with Emydex.
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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Labelling for Traceability

“Traceability is the cornerstone of any production management system and inevitably, labelling is the predominant method of maintaining traceability at various stages of operation. If product can be traced from farm to finished goods dispatch, then all of the data will be in place to produce whatever management information is required”, says Peter Kettel, Emydex Technology’s UK general manager.

“In the abattoir Emydex has systems producing labels for carcass, hides, heads, offal and tissue samples.”

Specialist weighing and printing techniques, together with purpose designed line configurations, are required for high-speed lamb lines. We’re able to print a bar-coded carcass tag label with full traceability every 4.5 seconds using our food processing software solution. Most beef plants will cut sides in a marshalling area, with some cuts going into boning and some dispatched as either hanging cuts or removed in jumbo containers.

Our carcass splitting engine automatically allocates traceability labels for all removed or hanging cuts. This is done via a hand- held Wi-Fi bar axle scanning terminal, with no need to re-weigh the cuts to produce the new labels.”

Throughout the production operation, there are normally weighing stations at critical control points. These are usually connected to industrial PC units and label printers, enabling software systems to control and monitor production.

Kettel says: ‘Relatively basic software packages will just record what product has been weighed into and out of production departments, using this data to produce yield reports. Advanced Emydex systems enable production to be planned and controlled. Only meat with the correct attributes of quality status, grade, country of origin and so on is allowed to be input into particular production batches. Cuts from individual carcass can be traced throughout he deboning process with purposely designed operating procedures.’

 

Extract from story originally published in Meat Trades Journal January 2012

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Updated Post Mortem QC Station Developed

This application was developed so that it could be run on either fixed position industrial PC stations or mobile devices (MDA). It was developed in response to a need to eliminate poorly presented carcasses.

The carcasses arrive at the inspection point in sequence. The QC operator can enter a fault type and the system will give the opportunity to select the part of the carcass where the fault is present. Any number of faults can be registered against each carcass. After a pre-defined number of instances of the same fault a supervisor is informed allowing corrective action to be taken and recorded.

All fault history is recorded.

Please note that this is intended for use by in plant QC. It is not intended as a veterinary inspection station; however it would be fairly simple for a similar application to be configured for use by the veterinarians.

 

 

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Liffey Meats opt for Emydex Kill line system

Liffey Meats Branding

In November 2011, Liffey meats started a new chapter in the history of Ballinasloe by processing the first cattle in their new state of the art meat factory in the town. This Emydex Beef kill line system currently incorporates Lairage booking, Sequencing and Grading terminals as well an offal packing station, Carcass dispatch station and a Beef Payments system with links to Liffey Meats flagship processing plant in Ballyjamesduff. The Mallon family who own and operate Liffey Meats, have three state of the art processing plants located in Cavan and Carlow and Galway Ireland. An Emydex implementation team deployed their kill line system from green-light to go-live within 10 days starting from scratch.

Commenting on the roll-out, Derek McDermott, Financial Controller with the Liffey Meats group said “I was impressed to see how quickly the Emdyex team were able to deploy their kill line traceability system into our new slaughter plant in Ballinasloe without having previous worked with the Liffey Meat’s group. Their kill line and payments systems went live without incident, and have been functioning stably ever since. We initially opted to install Emydex’s standard beef kill line system, but soon after go-live realised there were many business specific reports as well as specific system customisations required to match our existing business processes. Again the Emydex team were able to code these requirements up for us without hassle in a short space of time. It’s early days for Liffey Meats as an Emydex customer, but so far, so good. Their support structures are solid also.”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “it’s rewarding to see that after 5 years of product design and development, Emydex today have a full suite of robust and stable software systems that can be installed into different working environments with the minimum of effort and fuss. Well done to all those who worked on the Ballinasloe rollout Algis, Carl and especially to Daniel, our technical delivery manager for going the extra mile.”

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Emydex Animal Payment System showcased at MeatUp UK

Over two days in June Emydex showcased a number of their new software products to the Meat processing trade at the UK’s new MeatUp Expo, which took place at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire over the 21st & 22nd June 2011.

Animal Payment

On display was Emydex’s latest release of their new multi-species Animal Settlement and Payments system, a fully integrated add-on to the Emydex Beef, lamb and Pork Kill line systems. The latest version of Beef Animal payments went live earlier in June at Emydex’s new customer Euro Farm Foods based in Duleek, Ireland.

Euro Farm foods replaced their existing beef kill line system with the Emydex beef kill line system incorporating Beef Lairage bookings, real-time links to the Department of Agriculture’s AIMs system for tracking cattle movements, real-time links to Bord Bia’s Beef Quality Assurance scheme via web services for tracking Supplier’s quality assurance status, Beef Ear-tag station, Grading & Weighing station, Offal packing, Carcass dispatch and Beef payment.

Emydex at MeatUp Uk 2011
Emydex at MeatUp Uk 2011
Emydex at MeatUp Uk 2011

The Animal payment module is capable of producing remittance advice notes, printing supplier cheques and managing associated costs involved with the abattoir. It allows for different payment schemas to be associated with individual suppliers or supplier groups. In addition to supplier payment the system also supports payment to clippers, hauliers and agents on an aggregated basis over time. Ad-hoc and supplementary payments are also supported. In addition to providing Multi-currency functionality, the system tracks historical pricing and exchange rates, and has a facility to define future pricing based on valid from dates. Beef payments in Ireland are automatically generated based on the 15 point Quality Payment grid.

The plan is to now roll-out a Lamb Animal Payment system in partnership with another new Emydex customer based in Scotland with whom Emydex will work with to configure their new multi-species payment system specifically for Lamb payments. “There are obviously differences between beef and lamb payments but these can be all handled by the configuration capabilities within the system, rather than requiring any new development effort” said Pete Kettell, Emydex’s UK Sales manager.

“We are also are also planning to roll-out our animal payment system for Pork payments either in conjunction with some of our existing pork processing customers operating a pork kill line or a new pork processing customer”, said David McMahon, CEO of Emydex.

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Emydex Beef Kill Line goes live in Euro Farm Foods.

Euro Farm Foods
Euro Farm Foods operate a beef slaughter plant at Cooksgrove, near Duleek in Co. Meath. The present business is unrecognisable from the small local abattoir taken over in 2001 by Michael & Agnes Fox. Continuous investment in infrastructure and personnel has helped the business establish and succeed in a demanding customer driven market.

With a view to further development of the business, in late 2010 Euro Farm Foods decided to upgrade from their previous factory software system to Emydex’s Kill line and Carcass Management system. After a period of design, installation and implementation, the go-live was complete in June 2011.

The Emydex lairage system in Euro Farm Foods links to both the AIMs and Bord Bia’s Quality Assurance systems in real-time, retrieving and verifying animal details, as well as farm quality assured status. Their upgraded kill line system includes an ear-tag sequencer, Grading/Weighing Stations, as well as Carcass Dispatch and Offal Packing terminals. Euro Farm Foods now also operate Emydex’s multi-currency Cattle payments system for animal settlements and cheque/remittance printing. The payments module also provides Euro Farm with the functionality to interface with their financial software package.

Commenting on the Emydex project, Ciaran Boyle, Financial Controller with Euro Farm Foods said; “Any decision to switch management information software is difficult due to a multitude of factors involved. After researching the factory software options which would best fit our business, we were impressed by the product and the people that are Emydex. It was reassuring to discuss our needs with people who knew and understood our business. This worked particularly well during the development of the cattle payments module. Difficulties encountered during the implementation process were not allowed become problems with agreed solutions delivered. Users have the benefits of improved accurate and reliable business reporting, stock controls, traceability and quality information. The support tools and staff also deserve a mention. Their assistance has been of particular help to our business.”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO added ‘as Euro Farm Foods are a single plant customers it was crucial Emydex provided Euro Farms with a cut-over to Emydex with as little disruption to production as possible. We initially implemented our Carcass dispatch module on an offal packing and carcass dispatch terminals, while interfacing back to their existing kill line system to extract and report on kill line activity. Once we were happy offal packing and carcass dispatch were all working fine, and the reports were correct we swapped out their existing kill line and payments systems with Emydex and switched over to Emydex entirely.
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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