Company News

Emydex at Foodex UK 2014

7th March 2014

Emydex technology are exhibiting our software at the Foodex trade show which will take place at the NEC Birmingham from 24th – 26th March 2014.

The Emydex stand that we will share with a UK hardware partner MWS Ltd of Leicesterwill be located in the UKWA Pavilion in Hall 20, at stand J369 where David McMahon, Emydex CEO, James Grennan, Emydex CTO and Peter Kettell, Emydex UK Sales Manager will be on hand to demonstrate some of Emydex’s software modules and answer any questions you may have.

The exhibition will showcase the Emydex Recipe weighing module running on a RADWAG PUE5.15. PC terminal / weight indicator for whom MWS are UK agents. The recipe module will be configured for burger production.

Also on the stand will be Emydex’s latest OCM packing station software. Again running on a RADWAG PUE5.15.

Demonstrations and presentations will be available on other Emydex Meat Industry software modules.

MWS will be showing a selection of their high quality stainless steel weighing equipment, equipment stands and printer cabinets

Recipe System

Applicable to meat processors with added-value operations, the recipe module will step-by-step, instruct food operators as to the ingredients, weights and cooking instructions required to create finished goods. The system will also verify actual weights measured in real-time to ensure the correct weights have been applied, and allows for full traceability of all constituent parts of the finished product.

Emydex software in use on Meat Factory floor terminals

Emydex 4.0 upgrade

10th February 2014

Emydex 4.0 upgrade

In line with Microsoft’s release of .NET 4.0 / 4.5 frameworks, Emydex took the opportunity to focus our Product Development team’s attention on a number of area’s we felt could be improved upon

The Emydex 4.0 release focuses on both the user interface ‘look and feel’ and ease of use of the Emydex system, as well as performance improvements. Many of the improvements arise on the back of enhancements in .NET and as such .NET 4.0 / 4.5 is the minimum framework requirement for this latest Emydex release

Metro Theming

In tandem with the release of .net 4.0/4.5, Microsoft also released the new Metro design language. This set of guides and best practices were compiled by Microsoft for use with applications targeting touch type interfaces. For Emydex 4.0 we worked on both the MDA (Mobile Device Application, typically used on rugged toughbook devices etc.) and SDA (handheld scanning terminal) theming to incorporate these guidelines.

We opted for a dark theme after doing tests under the sort of lighting conditions found on factory floors. Emydex also refreshed our iconography for both of these apps, opting for simpler, clean, icons over more detailed ones. Finally we have reduced the amount of variance in our colour pallet and assigned meaning to particular colour types so that screens flow much better.

Core Platform Improvements

For Version 4.0 we concentrated on improvements to all of our core products.

UI Clarity. Where it made sense, we reviewed the core UI, as well as reviewing every line of code in order to optimise it, making it leaner and more efficient to execute. We tidied up menu items, iconography etc. in order to improve the ease of use of the EMYDEX system overall.
Touch Usage Improvements. Particularly in the MDA and SDA, we wanted to improve our touch screen usability. All grids in the MDA use inertial scrolling (like on phones and tablets). This will also be available soon on the PCA (Industrial PC Terminal). We added many more keyboards and popup screens to both the MDA and SDA. Finally we added better controls filtering and sorting on a touch screen.
Update / Patch improvements. We overhauled our Update and Patch solution. Developers that work with our larger customers will, as of version 4.0, find it easier to patch or update Emydex when required to do so. This improvement should see time saved for our customers as devs can work quicker and easier when patching or updating the system.

Standardisation

Version 4.0 marked the creation of a standardised Emydex industry modules, focussing on the Fish processing industry initially. Efforts to standardise portions of our system have been of benefit to our existing customers too, for example:

Improvements to the SDA. The SDA has had a UI overhaul to make it easier to work with. Cleaner on screen keyboards and buttons have been added. Performance improvements in core SDA modules exist for all customers on version 4.0
Cloud Delivery. Our standard system is Cloud Delivered and optionally Cloud Managed, by providing both delivery and management in the cloud we can offer much greater flexibility to our customers in terms of solutions that fit their needs.
Label Management. As of Version 4.0 Labels can be managed centrally and stored in Emydex. Labels do not have to be stored on a share any longer. This allows labels to be managed on the client and synced to workstations easier than before.

Maturation of MDA

In the last major version release of Emydex we introduced the MDA (Mobile Device Application). The idea of the MDA was to have an app that was lighter than the PCA, could work offline, and would work better with tablet type devices. Version 4.0 brings a number of important changes to our MDA app, including:

File based SQL backend. This allows much easier management of the local database. There are no specific extras to install or set up and because the whole database exists as a file, it can be sent to us for debug purposes with ease.
Faster screen load times. Changes and performance improvements to our core have improved our screen loading times on the MDA. We measure 20% improvements in many instances.
Weight to Label time improved. The MDA contains an overhauled transaction engine which improves the speed of transactions. This means a faster turnaround time when weighing a box to putting a label on it.
The MDA now has the ability to use pop up style forms. This means we can make our UI’s less busy going forward and afforded greater ease of use to touch screens. All of our popups are multi-level meaning one popup and sit on top of another. This allows layer of features in ways we could not do before.

Deloitte Fast 50 Awards 2013

17th November 2013

Emydex at the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards 2013.

David McMahon, chief executive of Emydex Technology, is no stranger to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards. McMahon previously managed tech firm, Labyrinth, which also ranked in 16th place in 2002’s Fast 50 listing.

This year’s Emydex listing was secured on foot of a 362 per cent growth in the company’s revenue since 2008, and represents a climb of ten places since last year’s Fast 50 listing, when Emydex was placed 26th, based on revenue growth of 269 per cent.

”Back in 2002, 240 per cent growth was enough to rank 16th, versus 362 per cent required in 2013, and this was despite 2002 being the height of the dotcom boom time. It was also despite the inclusion of technology giants such as Cyril McGuire’s Trintech, Sean Kelly’s eTel and Chris Horn’s Iona Technology,” said McMahon.

Emydex was founded in 2004 by Redmond Burke and James Grennan, both of whom had worked with Scanvaegt Ireland, now Marel, one of the world’s largest suppliers of industrial hardware systems to food processing industries.

McMahon joined Emydex in 2009, and was appointed chief executive when Burke stepped down as managing director in 2010. Emydex sells factory floor production reporting and traceability systems for food producing groups, including Dawn Meats, Kepak, Dunbia, and Moy Park.

McMahon said Emydex had a balanced focus on increasing revenues and keeping existing customers happy. ”Ireland is too small, so you have to ensure your existing customers remain happy customers, as it these that will ultimately drive the future sales to your next customers.”

Food processors use Emydex software to manage production lines, control stocks, and report on food chain traceability as well as yields, costs and giveaways. The company employs 22 people, mainly programmers, but expects to create 18 new jobs in the next 18 months.

”We are actively recruiting an additional five .Net programmers on foot of new contracts won,” said McMahon.

January’s horsemeat scandal served as a wake-up call for the food sector globally, he said. “Since the scandal, we have definitely seen a rise in the number of inbound enquiries with technology-based traceability and food safety management systems firmly back on boardroom agendas.”

With more than 50 plants using Emydex software in Ireland, Britain and France, the company’s focus is on extending its global reach.

”We are working on a number of opportunities in Southern Africa – in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa – right now, with local partners and support from Enterprise Ireland. We are on the verge of signing our first contract there before year-end,” McMahon said, who credits the company’s niche market as the reason for its growth in the past five years.

”There are opportunities and temptations to expand our product and service offerings in new directions, such as supplying industrial hardware in addition to software, or supplying software systems into new industries. However, by learning to say no’ and focusing instead on what you are really good at – your core strengths – you get successful project rollouts, satisfied and happy customers, that drive future growth.”

McMahon said the Deloitte accolade would help to attract valuable new talent. ”As a Fast 50 fast-growing company, we are going to need plenty more programmers to allow the company to grow its people in line with revenue growth, having won new customers,” he said. ”What is most important to me is that we build a greater awareness of Emydex Technology among the established network of talented programmers out there, so that we might attract more applicants for the .Net programming jobs we have available.’

Details of the final Technology Fast 50 ranking list are available to download at www.fast50.ie

Emydex climbs 10 places in Deloitte Fast 50 awards 2013

11th November 2013

Emydex attributes growth to niche focus on providing Traceability Software solutions for Food Processors

Emydex Technology today announced that it ranked 16th in the 2013 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Ireland. Rankings are based on average percentage revenue growth over five years, which for Emydex represents 375% growth since 2008. This year’s result represents a climb of ten places over last year’s Fast 50 ranking when Emydex achieved 26th position

Emydex’s CEO, David McMahon, credits Emydex’s single minded focus on providing data capture & production reporting software systems to leading Food Processing companies with the company’s growth over the past five years.

“There are many opportunities and temptations to expand Emydex’s product and service offerings in new directions, such as supplying industrial hardware in addition to software, or supplying software systems into new industries, but by sticking to the knitting and focussing on what you are really good at, makes for successful project roll-outs, and happy customers, and that’s what ultimately drives growth.” said David McMahon, Emydex CEO

The Fast 50 programme, now in its fourteenth year in Ireland, ranks the fastest growing technology companies in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This year, there are 18 companies from Northern Ireland in the ranking. The average growth rate of the Fast 50 companies named in this year’s ranking is 361%.

The awards took place in the Titanic building in Belfast on Friday 8 November. Paul Lee, Head of Global Research for Technology, Media and Telecommunications at Deloitte was keynote speaker at the event. Media sponsors included the Sunday Business Post and Ulster Business and corporate sponsors of the event were Invest NI.

Arthur Mallon’s fully operational with Emydex

26th August 2013

Arthur Mallon Foods specialise in the production of fresh, frozen and cooked sausages. They supply fresh and frozen pork, to the major Irish retailers and export frozen pork sausage to Holland. Mallon’s sausages have won multiple awards in Ireland, UK and France and have achieved two Great Taste Awards in 2012. They operate from a purpose built modern production facility in Hilden, Co. Monaghan.

Arthur Mallon Foods identified a requirement to upgrade their existing production management systems to a single production management system that was scalable and flexible to meet with growing demands for specific industry, customer and supplier requirements. They required a single system to manage and report on order control, stock control, recipe formulation, traceability, quality control and yield control. With these objectives in mind they contacted Emydex in 2012.

Phase 1 – In order to minimise disruption to normal day operations, the project was split into a number of smaller project phases. Starting at the end, in Phase 1 Emydex customised their Packing & Processing module to suit Mallon’s particular needs including features such as Unit, Box and Pallet Labelling. Packing stations allow operators to work to Packing Work Orders whilst enabling them to switch quickly between Work Orders.

As part of this same project phase, Emydex’s Warehouse Management module covering Dispatch was implemented ‘off-the-shelf’ with only a few tweaks required to meet their particular requirements. “The key point about Emydex software is the standard module offerings are very comprehensive and cover almost everything we need, and if they don’t have specifically what we need, it’s not a major hassle to change it” said Paul Kearney in Arthur Mallon Foods.

In parallel with the Emydex factory floor install

Mallons also upgraded their ERP system, and Emydex integrated seamlessly with this. Sales orders are keyed into their financial system and then sent directly to Emydex for order picking and dispatching. Purchase orders are generated within Emydex, and then exported to the financial system upon receipt of goods.

Phase 2 of the project covered Raw Material and Dry Goods Intake, as well as Issuing Stock into Production via handheld scanners to ensure stock levels are accurately maintained.

Phase 3, Emydex’s Recipe formulation system is currently being implemented, and about to go-live. This module will track and control the levels of ingredients being issued to recipes as well as the calculating yields from finished recipes. Implementing the recipe system will assist Arthur Mallon’s with Quality Control and Traceability reporting, as well as provide key information in real-time to the floor managers as to the performance of the line.

“Already we are seeing the advantages of having Emydex as well as the capabilities and possibilities for the future. With the software and the excellent backup and service from all the staff in Emydex we feel we have the complete package.” Paul Kearney
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

Emydex Products Update

16th August 2013

Emydex’s dedicated Product Development team of 5 developers now work out of a separate innovation centre located in Unit 13, Northwest Centre. The team have been busy over the past 6 months working on next our generation Emydex software systems including Emydex Standard Systems, an iteration of the Emydex platform hosted in the cloud (Emydex-On-Demand) as well as many more new features including a new direct label printing (DLP) engine. The product development team are also re-engineering our core internal tool chain and libraries with the creation of a new CCL (Common Core Libraries).

Emydex Standard Systems

As the Emydex platform has matured over the past 10 years, we have seen commonalities emerge in the features our customer’s request. Overtime, functionality has begun to gravitate towards a standardised set of rules and methodologies. In tandem we have asked by some food processors to provide Emydex systems with less reliance on customisation in favour of ease and speed of installation, deployment, usage and management.

Typically smaller to medium sizes food processors have enquired after such standardised systems. The Emydex Standard Systems (ESS) project takes all the Emydex experience and know-how gained in designing and deploying production management systems for our customers over the past 10 years, to produce our standard versions of each essential component within in a typical end-to-end food production process from Intake, through Into-Production, Packing, Labelling, Order Picking and Dispatch

Standard Intake: The goal of this project phase is to standardise the process of goods-in and quality control. We will take a number of different features from existing systems and blend them together to provide a standardised Intake module. This new module will be released on our MDA software (that can operate on Industrial PC terminals) and is broken down into the following deliverables:

Initial Intake
QC Hold and Intake Returns
QC Release
Post Intake / Raw Goods In

You may also notice we have done a lot of work around our new embedded scales indicator, including re-skinning and adding further validation functionality around limits and checks. This indicator is just one of the new standardised components being built in tandem with standard packing:

Standard Warehousing: This project phase will see a re-write of our standard dispatch warehousing system (SDA) that typically runs on hand-held scanning terminals such as the Motorola Symbol MC9090 range. Some key deliverables of the SDA standardisation project will include:

Swapping out Windows CE database running on handhelds for SQL Lite eliminating the requirement to install IIS on local servers and to sync via IIS services. SQL lite is also a higher performing database than SQL CE.
Customising the SDA application to work with Emydex-on-demand i.e., delivery via the cloud, licencing and subscription services for value-added/overseas resellers
Reworking of SDA application to work more seamlessly with higher resolution screen-sizes eg., MC9190
Creating a version of the new CCL to work with the compact framework
Standardisation of SDA forms such as:

QC Release
Into Production
Return From Production
To Rework
Palletizing
Movements
Stock Reconciliation/Cycle
Order Picking
Shipments
Customer Returns

The Emydex Standard Systems project takes the best of each of our systems and applies a common standard across the whole suite of products. Configuration will be provided; that will allow each customer to configure their system to meet their own needs without the need for Business Logic or custom code written by Emydex. While configuration is not as extensible as customisation, we feel it will provide ample personalisation for smaller food processors who do not have m/any internal IT staff.

Emydex On-Demand

Emydex on Demand is an iteration of Emydex delivered via and powered by the cloud (Microsoft Windows Azure). Emydex on Demand will enable Emydex to deploy systems to our customers in a fraction of the time, to maintain and upgrade systems quicker and easier, and allow customers more freedom than any comparable system on the market in terms of installation availability.

Many distributors working within our specialised food processing industries, both here and overseas, have expressed a desire to have the ability to install and manage Emydex systems for their customers. Traditionally the level of customisation desired by customers meant that only Emydex and it’s team could reasonably manage a customers requests. With Emydex on Demand and its configuration model, we will be able to provide a partner system with industry champions who wish to offer Emydex as a solution to their customers. Both Emydex and it’s partners will be able to support customers ranging from small all the way to enterprise level and provide standardised solutions with custom configuration on a per customer basis.

Direct Label printing

Traditionally label printing has presented a bottleneck for fast paced production. Because of the complexity of label design and templating, printing is usually provided via Windows Spooler or via supporting functionality from a given Label Designer company, both of which are slow. Our innovation team has designed a new direct label printing engine that allows customers to design labels in a third party label designer (we currently support NiceLabel) and import them into their Emydex system. By importing the label in to Emydex we can then optimise and print the label directly over TCP or Serial resulting in noticeably quicker print times. The direct label printing engine will be available for our Client, PCA, and MDA for all customers. Emydex will continue to support and maintain Nice Labels in tandem which will better suit our customers that require more WISIWIG type functionality, but for those in the need of high-speed label printing (such as retail production lines) the DLP engine will be the better option.

Common Core Libraries

At Emydex we have an extensive collection of internal tooling and support libraries which enable us to build great software. The Common Core Libraries or CCL for short is a reworking of these libraries and tools that includes automated testing, improved documentation and modernisation. While the CCL is an internal project for the most part, the improvements it brings will be noticeable from a customer’s perspective. Some of the deliverables of interest to our customers include:

A completely new and powerful logging system which will provide testers and support with detailed and relevant information for the purposes of troubleshooting or diagnostics. With this new system we are able to identify slowdowns and bottlenecks in our software down to 1/3rd of a millisecond.
A modern and robust threading model. Threading is complicated but it allows software to be much more responsive by allowing tasks to run in the background without impacting the front end. We have built a new threading model that is much easier to implement and manage from a developers perspective. This will allow our developers to run more work as background tasks, which in turn will improve the responsiveness of our system.
We now use the CCL as a test bed for a specific type of testing (Unit testing). Unit tests are extremely small, automated tests. These tests break code down into logical units and test if the unit behaves as expected. What makes unit tests so useful is the fact that thousands of tests can be ran at the click of a button with no interaction from a developer.

Emydex Standard Systems, Emydex-on-Demand, Direct Label Printing and other products and enhancements like CCL represent Emydex’s continuing drive to evolve to meet the needs of customers now and in the future.

By investing heavily in our existing products and innovating based on customers’ needs we feel we are in the best position possible to provide systems that work to optimise and support your business.

Emydex at Foodex UK 2014

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