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Emydex Customer Survey Results 2016

In September 2016, Emydex conducted a customer survey looking for feedback from our customers on various aspects of our business.

In total 40 customers responded, representing 84% of all Emydex customers polled.

Here are the Results:

Overall Satisfaction: The question asked was ‘Overall, how satisfied are you with Emydex?

The result was an overall average score of 5 (Satisfied) on a scale of 1-6.

In total 92% of all Emydex customers are either Very Satisfied, Satisfied or Slightly Satisfied

Recommendation: The question asked was ‘How likely are you to recommend Emydex to a work colleague?’

The result was an overall average score of 8 on a scale of 1-10

Commenting on the two ‘overall’ customer satisfaction results, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “Obviously Emydex are delighted with these results. When we ran our first customer survey in early 2013, we had 15 customers operating 45 sites at the time, and the customer feedback was equally as good back then. Today we have over 40 customers operating close to 100 sites, and we were eager to learn whether we could sustain this high level of satisfaction amongst our existing customer base, as we grew larger as a company, particularly into new overseas markets where you don’t get as many opportunities to meet your customers face to face very often, if even at all?”

McMahon continued “Ireland is a small country, everyone knows everyone, so you really need focus on delivering on your promises to your customers. Your existing customers will tell others about their positive experiences if they are satisfied, but equally, dissatisfied customers are more likely to tell 10 times as many people about their experiences if they are not!”

Quality of System: The question asked was ‘How satisfied are you with the Quality, Speed & Performance of the Emydex solution configured for you?’

The result was an overall average score of 5 (Satisfied) on a scale of 1-6

A number of other questions asked in the survey, polled our customer base on factors such as Project Management, Managing Expectations and our Customer Helpdesk to which the average scores were all 4 (Slightly Satisfied) on a scale of 1-6, so we know there are areas for improvement in both our Project Management and Customer Helpdesk departments.

Valerie Coleman was recently promoted from our Customer Helpdesk team to a Project Management role. Valerie has very quickly risen to the task as a Project Manager, with very positive feedback from customers in projects she is managing. In addition, we are working on a number of new initiatives with our customer helpdesk team in order to try to speed up time to resolution of ‘non-critical’ helpdesk tickets. These initives include an incentive scheme for ‘first touch’ issue ticket resolution, and more use of the phone to help diagnose the root-cause issues for tickets sooner, than relying on email for diagnosis.

The final Question asked was in relation to the Lead Programmers abilities and skills working on each customer project. Same with all previous customer surveys conducted the average score was the highest of all questions polled, with the average score being 5.28 out of 6 for all 40 customers polled. Specific feedback from customers included “Technical ability is excellent”, “Our programmer is Tops, I could write forever in praise of him, please do not take him away from us”, “our programmer has 100% commitment and is easy to work with”, “our developer is very helpful and appears to be an excellent programmer”, “our programmer was so excellent because he managed to get his work completed well before the time given, and he was always communicating proactively with us”.

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Traceability System Live in La Rousse Foods

DUBLIN/BELFAST – IRELAND:
With operations located in Dublin and Belfast, La Rousse Foods specialise in the supply of fine foods to premium food establishments since 1992. Acquired by the Swiss-based food group Aryzta in 2015, the company has more than 1,300 corporate customers in Ireland, and have their own catering butchery, cheese-maturing room and chocolate lab. La Rousse offer a wide range of fresh, seasonal and innovative premium produce from a network of local and international producers.

La Rousse approached Emydex in 2014 with a requirement to implement a robust factory floor Traceability and Production management system to replace manual operations in both their Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. La Rousse were looking for a factory floor IT system that would provide them with real-time, accurate reporting on production, yields and Stocks, with full forwards and backwards food chain Traceability from factory door to door. For shop floor equipment La Rousse opted to implement Bizerba industrial weighing scales, harsh environment terminals as well as printers.

They were previously operating a paper based Traceability and Quality Assurance recording and reporting system, which was time consuming to both administer and report on. Stock control was also a manual operation which was labour intensive and time consuming. Previously the Cheese Operations area operated with a Microsoft Dynamics Nav system, whereby Purchase Orders for Intake were keyed directly into a Nav form running on an office PC located at Cheese Intake.

Weights and traceability information were later keyed in manually against the purchase orders. La Rousse identified a requirement for a software system that fully integrated with Navision in real time and replaced the manual in-put of weights and traceability information, as well as to manage the processing, packing, order picking and dispatch of cheeses to end-customers.

In parallel, La Rousse were planning to double the size of their existing catering butchery operations by building a new purpose-built state-of-the-art butchery on a site adjacent to their existing operation in Dublin. For this new operation, La Rousse also needed a factory floor system capable of production managing this new production facility from factory door-to-door.

Cheese Processing Software

Phase one of the project saw the rollout of Emydex’s Production Management Software to the Cheese Operations covering intake, processing & packing, picking & dispatch, returns both to/from suppliers and customers and QC Hold.  Due to the flexible nature of the software, Emydex were able to integrate to la Rousse’s existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, providing a seamless real-time interface between both systems.

Packing and Processing Software

Phase two was a much more substantial project seeing the rollout of Emydex’s Packing & Processing software module to the new catering butchery operation running on fifteen  Bizerba  industrial terminals, connected to  Bizerba Industrial Weighing scales and printers covering operations such as Intake, Debagging, Deboning, Dry Aging, Preparation Lines, Metal Detection and Packing. Emydex’s Warehouse management module is also installed, running on a number of intelligent handheld scanning terminals covering Internal stock movements as well as sales order picking and dispatch.

Today La Rousse now have a comprehensive Production management software system that is fully integrated with their back-office ERP system.

Commenting on the Emydex project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “La Rousse Foods were a great fit customer for Emydex to work with. A professional run company from the outset, the La Rousse Foods project team had a clear vision as to their system needs, with defined project objectives and requirements. They were insistent in seeking to understand the precise inputs and outputs to each and every stage of their production processes, with the result that today they have an Emydex system that provides both bullet-proof traceability processes, as well as accurate and real-time accurate reporting on Production, Yields and Stocks.”

Stuart Campbell, General Manager with La Rousse Foods added “Emydex have provided us with a robust Factory Floor Traceability and Production Management system for both our Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. Our Management team now have accurate real time reporting on production, yields and stocks as well as full forwards and backwards food chain traceability from factory door to door.”

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Emydex sign 6 new customers in Southern Hemisphere

Following previous customer successes implementing Emydex software systems in leading meat processors in both Namibia (MeatCo) and Botswana (BMC), Emydex today report six further new customer signings in the Southern Hemisphere spread over South Africa, Australia and the Philippines.

In January 2016, Emydex signed contracts with Klein Karoo, the world’s largest ostrich processor, with their head-quarters in Oudtshoorn, South Africa. The project will see Emydex factory floor systems installed in Klein Karoo’s three Ostrich Abattoir and Deboning operations located in Oudtshoorn, Graff-Reinet and Swellendam. Working in partnership with iPlan Global, Emydex’s local market partner based in Pretoria, the Emydex software systems installed will cover both local as well as export operations, including kill lines, deboning and value-added operations.

In Australia, following go-live of Emydex’s lamb kill line system in Junee Lamb in New South Wales, Emydex has signed up three further leading beef processors, all based in Victoria. The first beef installation is due to go live shortly, with the other two Beef kill line projects about to commence in parallel. All three projects will see implementation of Emydex’s beef kill line and payments system, Emydex’s Packing and Processing as well as Warehouse Management modules into the boning room operations. The implementation of all four meat factory projects implemented in Australia will be overseen by Emydex’s Australian distributor based in Brisbane, as well one of Emydex’s senior software engineers now living in the region.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, work is well underway on an Emydex Traceability and Production reporting system for Meliomar, a leading Tuna Processor based in Pasay City. Working under the Artesmar fisheries improvement programme developed by Blueyou Consulting in Switzerland, Meliomar has also developed a unique traceability system with Emydex that incorporates the tagging of each individual tuna upon landing, which allows the company to reliably trace all tuna products direct from their origin. “The investments Meliomar makes into its traceability system and the program of fishery improvement are significant”, said Blueyou.

Commenting on the customer successes in the region, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “Emydex is well established in the Southern Africa region since our first implementation there back in 2013. System roll-outs are now well underway in Australia, with further prospects in New Zealand. In addition to focussing on the continued growth and development of these two new important markets, we are also busy working on a pipeline of opportunities, seeking our first Emydex implementation in North America.”

After a few months researching the potential market, Terry McCorriston, based in Ontario, who previously worked with a number of ERP vendors in Canada, was appointed in March 2016 as a distributor for Emydex in North America. “Terry has extensive experience in implementing production planning and shop floor solutions in one of Canada’s largest meat processing companies, so he has the requisite market domain knowledge as well as systems expertise”, added McMahon.

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Fish Processing Software live in Fish Factory & 12 Trawlers

LOUTH – IRELAND:
Clogherhead Co-op based in Co. Louth on the East Coast of Ireland, is one of Ireland’s leading Seafood Processors. The Co-Op operate a twelve-strong fleet of modern fishing trawlers, as well as an impressive collective of skilled manpower. The Co-operative’s core offering is frozen at sea prawns, with the balance made up of whitefish species including monkfish, cod and hake.

The Co-Op supplies both domestic as well as export market countries including Italy, France, Spain and Holland. All of the vessels boast newly installed ‘frozen at sea’ equipment allowing Prawns to be handpicked and quickly frozen, ensuring exemplary quality, freshness and traceability. The boats can also stay at sea for longer, substantially decreasing the Co-op’s carbon footprint.

Traceability System

As part of the Irish Government’s ‘eLocate’ scheme launched to encourage the implementation of electronic traceability systems within the Irish seafood industries, Clogherhead Co-op approached Emydex with a requirement to replace their existing factory floor Production Reporting and traceability system, with a new modern software system that was flexible to make changes easily and quickly, and that could interface with the required Irish fishery body systems such as the SFPA.

Clogherhead also needed a system that would reduce time spent labelling products as they landed.  They sought a system that could be installed on their fleet of twelve trawlers allowing for frozen prawns to be barcoded and labelled at Sea with all required traceability information, enabling speedy and accurate landings into the factory on arrival at port.

Onshore Weigh Labelling

Emydex installed their factory floor software system into the Clogherhead factory including the Emydex Packing & Processing module used for weigh-labelling of product, as well as the Emydex Warehouse Management module used to manage and report on all factory stocks.

Offshore Weigh Labelling

In addition Emydex’s new labelling-at-sea software systems were installed on the Co-Ops fleet of boats to enable labelling of fixed weight prawns into both inner and outer boxes at sea.
The boat system also allows for the labelling of shellfish at the time and place of catch, capturing traceability information including catch date, catch area and use by date for example, meaning they just have to scan the boxes into intake on shore. Sean Gallagher, Emydex’s Project Manager commented “one of the challenges that Emydex faced with the roll-out of our boat system was that once the boat left the port, it was offline. This meant we could only iron out any issues later identified once the boat came back to shore. So we focused on ensuring we had the first boat running smoothly, before we rolled it out to a further few boats and then eventually all twelve in the fleet”. Lastly Emydex was configured with new functionality to allow the Co-Op to reconcile boats catches, with customer invoices, allowing payments to their suppliers, the boat owners.

Today Clogherhead Co-op are running the Emydex system within their factory from door-to-door. The bulk of product is landed from the boat fleet, pre-labelled at sea with bar-codes, facilitating speedy and accurate intake of frozen product. This means the Co-op no longer have to commit time and resources to the labelling of products as they arrive on shore, given they’re already labelled at sea.

Streamlined Intake Process

This new streamlined intake process allows Clogherhead to scan in the pre-labelled boxes directly to their stores and dispatch from there as required. Any product not labelled at sea can be weigh-labelled on a fixed position intake terminal located on the dry dock. The Emydex back-office system provides management and supervisors with real-time and accurate reporting on factory stocks, production as well as both forward and backward traceability reporting.

Commenting on the Emydex project, Paul Boyd, Managing Director with Clogherhead Co-op said “The key for me is that Emydex were able to provide Clogherhead with their standard fish system built in consultation with BIM, the SFPA, as well as the GS1, but allow Clogherhead to tailor and tweak the system to suit our specific needs and processes exactly. Aside from our old factory floor system, we also operated a bespoke-built boat invoicing and payments system. Emydex were able to configure and build into their standard Fish system, the very same functionality as our previous system, meaning we now have everything we need in a single system, supported in-life by the Emydex support team. After a year at sea, the Co-op that includes the factory and fleet of boats all see the efficiencies and savings realised from our new labelling-at-sea systems”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO added “This project included a first for Emydex, in that our software is now operating on a fleet of boats in an offline environment, but at the same time has proved very successful. Hopefully over time this is something that will be adopted by the fishing industry as a whole”

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Emydex at Foodex 2016

Emydex Technology will be exhibiting their Factory Floor Software for Meat, Fish and Food Processors at the Foodex trade show, taking place at the NEC Birmingham from 18th – 20th April 2016.

Emydex are sharing exhibition stand no. K231 with their UK Industrial hardware partner MWS Ltd Emydex attendees at the show will include:

David McMahon, CEO
James Grennan, CTO
Peter Kettell, UK Systems Manager
Jill Robinson, Marketing Manager

The team will be available to demonstrate any of Emydex’s software modules featured at the show, and will be on hand to answer any questions you might have.

Foodex 2016 Emydex Stand

Appointments were available for a demo at the show
Emydex Abattoir Kill line & Payments system
Emydex Packing (Weigh-labelling) System
Emydex Recipe Formulation System
Emydex Quality & Compliance System
Emydex Warehouse management System
Emydex Order Management Module
There was three equipment stations also on show

The first featured a 19”RADWAG PUE5.19 touch screen PC terminal / weight indicator, bench scale, label printer and bar code scanner (supplied by MWS). This station will be used to demonstrate the Emydex shop floor operation of the Recipe Formulation Module and also Intake against Purchase Orders. The recipe module will be configured for burger production, but can equally be used in any form food production where products are manufactured using recipes.

The second equipment station featured wireless devices such as tablet PC’s and hand held scanning terminals. These devices will be used to demonstrate the shop floor functionality of the Quality module and the Warehouse Management Module

The third equipment station featured a 15.6” RADWAG PUE5.15 Touch Screen PC Terminal / weight indicator, label printer and bench scale. This station will showcase Emydex’s latest OCM packing station software, running both with and without order processing.

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

For further information on Emydex Food Processing Software please contact David McMahon in Emydex Dublin or Peter Kettell in Emydex UK, click here for contact details.

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Emydex partnership in Australia & New Zealand

Emydex Technology, based in Dublin Ireland, is a leading supplier of Factory Floor data capture, Production Reporting and Traceability Software systems to Meat, Fish & Food processors around the world. 

After a number of years working with Enterprise Ireland to find the right partner to represent Emydex in Australasia, we are delighted to announce an Emydex partnership in Australia & New Zealand. The company recently announced it had signed contracts with BCP Pty Ltd based in Brisbane, Australia. BCP’s directors are well known within the Australasian Food Processing Industry as suppliers of Industrial hardware and software systems with a reputation built over 20 years for quality, innovation and proactive customer service.

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As the exclusive agent for reselling Emydex systems in Australia and New Zealand, Emydex now have a team of six dedicated staff based in Brisbane, as well as a network of consultants spread across Australia and New Zealand, who are providing implementation and technical support for Emydex software systems implemented in the Southern Hemisphere. The added advantage being that 24 hour support for Emydex’s existing Northern Hemisphere customers can be bolstered with assistance from the new Support team in Emydex’s Brisbane base.

BCP will add value to the Emydex software offering in the local market by providing for full turnkey solutions to Foods processors that includes all Industrial hardware requirements such as scanners, Industrial PC terminals, scales and printers etc. Heading up the Australian operation is Ian Carson, who had previously acted as Emydex’s agent in Australia and New Zealand for the past two years. Formerly CEO of Cedar Creek systems in Australia, Ian joins Emydex Australasia as company CEO. With over 20 years’ experience of working with a variety of food processing systems in Australasia, Neil Pitt will act as Director of Sales and Customer Relations.

One of Emydex’s most senior and long serving developers also moved to Brisbane in January with his family in order to oversee the initial software installation in Junee Lamb, based in New South Wales, as well as to provide customer training and helping with the upskilling of BCP programmers.

To coincide with the 2016 launch, two of Emydex’s company directors visited Australia and New Zealand for 18 days in February, and met with over a dozen meat, poultry and seafood processors, as well as Emydex partners and consultants based in WA, Victoria and Auckland.

Since the visit Emydex have signed their second customer in Australia, a beef processor based in Victoria, and are in contract negotiations with a number of other processors with a view to starting further new projects in the region.

Related News

In January 2016, Emydex signed contracts with the largest Ostrich processor in the world based in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, a project that will see Emydex software rolled out to three Ostrich, Sheep and Game abattoir plants as well as Value added and further processing plants over the coming eight months.

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