Company News

Appointment of Australasian Distributor

14th April 2014

Emydex are pleased to announce the appointment of Ian Carson and his team as the Emydex partner distributor for the region. Based in Brisbane Australia, Ian previously worked with Emydex on a number of customer implementations in both Ireland and Southern Africa where he became familiar with the underlying structure and workings of the data capture and production reporting platform.

Ian believes the Emydex solution has great potential for the Australian and New Zealand markets. Being a mature yet modern, highly flexible solution, already proven in many large multinational meat processing companies, Emydex is ideally suited to food & meat processors both large and small. By utilising existing hardware, customers can significantly reduce the cost of upgrading to a new system and yet gain all the benefits offered by a modern, flexible and robust software environment.

Ian has worked for many years in senior positions with Sastek and latterly the Cedar Creek Company and has a wealth of experience in the food processing industry with the likes of Unilever, Heinz and Lowe Walker. With over 25 years in the meat processing industry in both Australasia and overseas, not only as an ‘end user’ but also as a systems provider, Ian has a deep understanding of both business processes and importantly,how technology can add value to these.

Having worked with many systems in the past,Ian quickly noted a particular strength of the Emydex system is its ability to offer a ‘business logic’ layer which allows Emydex to tailor the software platform to meet customer-specific needs, and yet still keep the core base system intact allowing for upgrades as they become available. This allows companies to maintain the competitive advantage they derive from their unique business processes, yet still take advantage of the new features included in future software upgrades, something most other systems do not allow.

In addition to traditional ‘on-premise’ installations, the Emydex system can also be offered as a service (SaaS), hosted as a cloud based system with flexible licensing models allowing for reductions in the capital costs of upgrading systems, as well as keeping ongoing costs of ownership to reasonable levels. Cloud based deployment can also assist larger multi-site companies to manage their own Emydex software environment centrally, thereby reducing administration costs.

Realising that support for a system is as important as the functionality itself, Ian is delighted that his Australian based team offering 1st and 2nd level support,backed by the Ireland-based technical help-desk team, will be able to offer 24-hour support for customers with support staff online and able to assist at anytime.

Ian Carson (far right) with some of the Emydex delivery team on assignment in Namibia.

In order to obtain more information or for a product demonstration please contact Ian on:

Office: +61 7 3289 8336
Mobile: +61 4566 31662
Email: ian.carson@emydex.com

Emydex live in MeatCo, Namibia

10th April 2014

WINDHOEK – NAMIBIA:
Emydex today announce that their factory floor Data Capture, Production Reporting and Traceability system is now live and operational in MeatCo (Namibia)’s main beef processing plant in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

The beef primal deboning system in Windhoek is the first of an eight phase project that will see Emydex systems rolled out across MeatCo’s six beef processing operations in four separate locations in Namibia, as well as integrating Emydex to the Table Bay Cold Store in South Africa.

The two year, Euro 300k contract includes system rollout to Meatco’s two export approved slaughter and boning plants in Windhoek and Okahandja. Both plants are capable of slaughtering up to 1500cattle per day. The naturally grass fed Beef for which Namibia is famous is supplemented with Beef from Meatco’s own feed lot at Okapuka.

The Meat Corporation of Namibia (‘MeatCo’) also operate two further non-export abattoirs owned by the Namibian government but managed by Meatco, in Katima and Oshakati, which will both see Emydex installed. Finally a Wholesale beef processing plant and a cannery (both on the Windhoek site) will operate Emydex’s production management system.

Having pre-configured MeatCo’s customer specific business requirements in Dublin during February, Emydex staff were onsite in Windhoek during the Months of March and April, further configuring and customising the Emydex system to comply with the local market requirements of Meatco’s main export plant.

Phase one of the Windhoek project covered the carcass chills, carcass dispatch, boning hall, primal and carton packing, finished product stock, carton dispatch and integration to Meatco’s Sage X3 ERP system. Emydex are currently working on the Meatco Wholesale plant in Windhoek, soon to be followed by the Cannery and finally the Windhoek Beef slaughter line.

The company are targeting September 2014 as a likely roll out date for Windhoek system into Meatco’s second export plant in Okahandja.Due to the inherent flexibility and usability of the Emydex system Meatco are planning to roll out the Emydex system in the Oshakati and Katima abattoirs themselves,with remote support from Emydex as needed.

Commenting on the first phase of the Emydex system roll-out, AndriesTaljaardt,Meatco’s Windhoek Plant Manager said

“While slaughter continues uninterrupted, system upgrades are currently being effected at our Windhoek abattoir to improve the effectiveness of operations and maximise output in order to cater to growing customer demands.

Because of these demands, and the fact that preferences and specifications are continuously changing, we have to move into the direction which the market is moving. We have installed a new Production Management Software System (Emdyex) and layout in our Windhoek abattoir deboning department, which allows for a lot of value addition to our products. The Emydex system controls the volumes and all the information on the deboning floor and is responsible for the production recons and the labelling of products.

With the new layout, we have introduced an additional vacuum line and an additional frozen line. With that, we can now put up to 420 carcasses through deboning per day within normal working hours. For May, we are looking to put more than 6600 carcasses through deboning. Round about June, once the system is fully implemented, the number of carcasses we want to put through deboning is about 7000.”

In addition Andries said “We chose Emydex given it is a highly technological system that is used in many international abattoirs that adhere to European Union standards. Meatco is a pioneer in quality standards compliance in Namibia and is one of the first companies to achieve certification for international standards like ISO 9001 and HACCP.”

Commenting on the Emydex system roll-out, Nico Weck, Group Chief Financial Officer at the MeatCo group said “since implementing Emydex’s shop floor barcode labelling and scanning system at our Windhoek primal deboning operations, our managers now have instant access to accurate reporting on our Yields, Stocks and Traceability”.

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.

Appointment of Australasian Distributor

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Emydex live in MeatCo, Namibia

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Emydex at Foodex UK 2014

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