Careers Contact Downloads |

Food Processing Software Solutions

Uncategorized @za

Home / Archives for Uncategorized @za

Emydex boost delivery team with new senior hires

Emydex Technology, the Irish software company that supplies Production Management Software solutions to Food Processers in Ireland and the UK has announced a number of new key hires that have joined their software development team responsible for implementing Emydex software solutions for their customers.

Carl Brennan joins the Emydex implementation team having previously spent 12 years as lead software developer with DEM machines in Ireland where he worked on projects including a food production monitoring system for Glanbia, a PLC portion control application for Green Isle Foods as well a high-speed check weighing system for Heinz Ireland. Educated with a B.Sc in Information systems in University of Queensland, Australia and a B.Sc in Computing from DIT, since joining Emydex in November, Carl has already worked on a beef kill line and payments system roll-out for Liffey Meats, and an Emydex upgrade of the Dawn Meats site in Montbazon, France.

Carl joins a team of experienced programmers including Conor O’Driscoll, with 14 years’ experience of software development for the Food Industry. Conor previously worked with Leaders retail, a POS specialist company for 7 years, and DEM Machines for 8 years as a software developer before then. Dwain Casey, another member of the software delivery team joined Emydex last year after 12 years working with companies such as Zetes, ADC Barcode and Geodis.

On the Product development side of the business, Dean McDonnell joined Emydex’s New Product Development team in October last where he is working with company co-founder and Technical Director James Grennan to enhance and develop new software modules and components for the Emydex core platform.

Commenting on the recent new hires, David McMahon, CEO with Emydex said “We deliberately set out to look for software developers with over 10 year’s relevant experience developing software for the food production sector. The food production industry is very specialised, with a steep learning curve, so it’s important to have a team of people behind your product that can understand your customer’s needs, and work with them to craft solutions to solve their business issues. The 11 developers now working across our 5 customer delivery teams have an average of 10 years work experience between them. I believe this is what sets Emydex apart from other suppliers operating in the Food Sector space”.

 

Request a Demo

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.

 

 

Request a Demo

Emydex launch new Mobile Device Applications

Emydex have launched a new mobile device application (MDA) that sits between the smart device application (SDA) and PC application (PCA). The application was developed for users that required a portable device with a larger screen and more functionality than currently available with hand held scanning terminals.

The MDA application will run on any Windows XP / Windows 7 based device such as notebooks, tough books and tablet PC’s. It is intended for applications that need to be operable in offline mode when connection to the main Emydex database is not possible.

The MDA application utilises a local database which synchronises with the Emydex SQL server database when connected to the host network via either it’s built in Wi-Fi connectivity, internet access or modem.

Emydex have deployed the MDA application in Tough Book devices that are equipped with integrated camera, bar code scanner, RFID reader, memory card reader and fingerprint scanner.

These devices have touch screen displays and are sealed to IP65 specification.

So far the MDA application has been configured for use as a fieldsman data input station, an ante-mortem station in the lairage at abattoirs and a mobile QC device for use anywhere in a factory.

The fieldsman application enables the user to view the plant kill plans when visiting producers and arranging appointments to deliver suitable livestock to the plant.

The ante mortem application enables lairage staff to enter QC data including take photographs of livestock that do not arrive in the best of condition. This picture can be tied to the animal’s ear tag to ensure a full record is maintained in the kill line system.

As a QC device the MDA application enables QC forms to be ran on the device. All of the scanning and camera devices built into the device can be used together with any external device connected to the USB / serial interface ports, such as temperature or PH probes.

Request a Demo

Winner 2011 Innovation in IT Award

Winner 2011 Innovation in IT Award

For the second year running, Emydex Technology were announced winners of the 2011 Innovation in IT award at the D15 Chamber of Commerce ceremony held in the Crowne Plaza Hotel & Country Club on Friday 7th October.

Sponsored by IBM, this award cements Emydex position as not only a successful Irish Technology company operating within the Agri-food space, but also as a leading Irish technology company within the wider business landscape.

Since winning the Innovation in IT award last year, Emydex’s headcount has doubled in size, revenues and profits have grown substantially, and the company is now looking at new markets including France and South Africa where Emydex recently announced the appointment of authorised distributors in both countries. “We are excited to have added a number of senior programmers to the development team recently, all of whom have over 10 years of relevant experience. At this stage our team has over 100 years combined experience of working with technology specifically for the food processing sector” said David McMahon, CEO of Emydex technology.

Commenting on the award win, James Grennan, company Technical Director said “We’re delighted to be chosen by the Chamber and IBM to win this award over some other excellent shortlisted companies, this helps us maintain our constant drive to build better and smarter software solutions for our present and future customers”

L to R on Picture: John Carolan – IBM, James Grennan – Emydex Technical Director, Susan Grennan, David Donnelly – Chamber President, Jayne McMahon, and David McMahon – Emydex CEO, presented with the Innovation in IT 2011 Award.

Request a Demo

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.

Request a Demo

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

Request a Demo