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Electronic Sheep EID / NLIS system for Sheep & Goats

VICTORIA – AUSTRALIA:

With the compulsory recording of individual sheep RFID ear tags due to commence now in Victoria (June 2017), Emydex Technology, a world leader in Traceability software systems for the food industry, is well positioned to not only meet this new requirement, but also to add real value for small stock processors.

Emydex links directly to the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) database, so data captured by the Emydex systems regarding received and processed animals, can easily be retrieved and uploaded the to the NLIS system.

By supplying a fully integrated system that links purchase appointments, deliveries, sale yard purchase data, animal welfare and quality assurance with on-floor processing data, a number of significant benefits are provided. These include data accuracy, minimal manual data input and full integration of the supply chain.

‘By integrating Emydex’s RFID data capture solution into the processing and payment chain, Wodonga Abattoir can gain full traceability and true individual carcass costing whilst complying with the new regulatory requirements. This gives us significant benefits and reduces manual data input by leveraging the inbuilt NLIS integration and sophisticated costing system that Emydex provides’. Rod Scarvell, Wodonga Abattoir.

P&L by Animal

A key feature of the Emydex system is the ability to produce a ‘P&L for every animal processed’ without having to manually key costing data or averaging costs over multiple animals.  By automatically processing the XML post sale datafiles as supplied by the saleyards, not only is the purchase data for each lot recorded and the lots for processing automatically created, the individual RFID (ear tag) numbers are stored against the supplying agent and the price paid.

This RFID data can then be matched back to the agent on an animal by animal basis, irrespective of when processing occurs or if stock is mixed prior to processing.

Additional costs can be applied by default on a saleyard or direct supply basis and can include freight, droving and, branding costs, commissions etc. so the full cost of each animal delivered to the yards can be determined.

Flexible Payments

With a user definable payment grid combined with the ability to include expected skin and other revenues the true cost of the stock to the processor is available. It is also possible to generate the slaughter floor costs (kill fee) for all purchases so stock can be costed ‘to the boning room’.

Naturally this also allows for the production of recipient created tax invoices, agent reporting, AUSMEAT feedback sheets and government levy accruals etc. which can all be emailed directly from the system to the relevant parties.

eNVD system

Emydex is also one a few ‘integrated’ systems that is certified by the MLA to integrate to the new eNVD system and thus provides the ability to receive NVD data electronically, which is fully integrated to other Emydex system modules. This provides the ability to not only store the relevant data from a legislative point of view, but also to utilise this data to drive the rest of the system by matching received livestock to the eNVD and then to the lairage, kill agenda and payments with minimal data input.

Being a fully integrated, flexible system built on modern .NET technology, with powerful on-floor data collection systems linked to a user-friendly back office system, Emydex, a system proven in over 30 livestock processing plants around the word, is able to offer the following advantages .

Emydex Sheep EID system benefits include:

  • The ability to create ‘appointments’ and lairage lots direct from the purchase advice data sent by the sale yards with no manual input (XML file)
  • The ability to match individual small stock animals back to the agent details of the appointment via the RFID to obtain the true cost of the animal (for costing).
  • The ability to add additional costs to a sale yard purchase such as agent commissions, droving, transport (up to three transport companies per purchase), feeding etc. all of which can be defaulted by sale yard provider. This then provides a true cost of stock to the plant by animal.
  • Track sale yard average costs for boxed lots if not RFID tagged.
  • Report on costs by provider (i.e. all freight or droving costs by supplier for a time period) to match to supplier invoice for reconciliation.
    The ability to record small stock EID data on the slaughter floor.
  • NLIS database interface inbuilt in the system negating the need to export/import or use any third-party applications. By having all of the current holdings etc. in the Emydex database (automatically downloaded) information can easily be match automatically to kill records.
  • An MLA certified eNVD solution integrated to the NLIS database and which provides the ability to create appointments from the eNVD data.
  • Flexible ‘three level’ payment grid with a second ‘fall through’ grid for animal that do not meet the criteria on the primary grid applied to the purchase.
  • Settlement schemes that automatically apply charges and rebates to supplier invoices associated with that scheme.
  • Record charges that apply to the invoice plus charges that are plant costs e.g. ‘processing levy’.
  • An optional facility to update any kill data from the back office after the kill.

Emydex Sheep Payments system benefits include:

  • Farmers (RCTI)
  • Hobby Farmers (no GST)
  • Advise agents of revenues for agent supplied over the hooks purchases (Buyer Advice).
  • Match sale yard agent invoices to the stock killed. Also allow for combine payments to the sale yard itself (VLE).
  • Record sheepskin sales and generate RCTIs to the purchasers.
  • Allow for the recording of all costs associated with a service kill and invoice those based on number of head processed.

Other system benefits include:

  • Email reports directly from the Emydex application without printing, scanning and emailing. Combine RCTI and feedback sheet as one email to supplier.
  • The ability to store general ledger codes per transaction type (e.g. fees, levies, purchase types etc. he facilitates the interface into accounting systems. Note interface not standard).
  • Flexible, easy to use data collection screens that can be combine or separated as required (i.e. a separate sex and dentition station or both functions on one).
  • Standalone grading stations that can run without the previous stations being available.
  • The ability to switch, at the flick of an on screen ‘switch’, between grading printers (for different ticket sizes etc. or in the case of a printer break down).
  • The ability to take an input from a panel reader and change to a wand reader should the panel reader fail (again at the flick of an on screen ‘switch’).
  • Data collection screens that can increment body numbers automatically and only be updated when necessary i.e. a breed station that only need to be updated if the breed needs to be recorded for a particular animal.
  • Inbuilt QA system with transport quality (cleanliness, bruising points etc.) and animal welfare check forms (which is able to be used in all the Emydex modules to provide a full quality management system).
  • Modern ‘.NET’ Microsoft SQL Server database environment.
  • Inbuilt report writer that allows IT Staff to generate reports in house.
  • Over 30 Emydex staff worldwide to support the application.
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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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Euro Quality Lambs are live with Emydex Kill Line & Payments System

SHROPSHIRE-UK:
Euro Quality Lambs Ltd (EQL) is a lamb and sheep abattoir capable of processing 12,500 carcasses a week with onsite boning and further processing facilities. The majority of EQL production is sold in carcass form, both to the UK and throughout Europe.

EQL is one of the largest specialised and dedicated Halal meat processors in the UK.

In 2014 EQL recognized that their ageing production management system was in need of updating in order to satisfy both customer and legislative quality, traceability and veterinary requirements. After a detailed review of market suppliers of meat processing software in both the UK and Ireland, Emydex Technology were chosen to supply a new Lamb kill line system to EQL.

Installed over a number of separate project phases, the Emydex software installed was configured specifically for EQL, by tailoring the Emydex standard Lamb kill line system to deliver functionality from livestock procurement right through to carcass & box dispatch.

Hardware costs were kept to a minimum by reusing the existing scales, printers and barcode scanners. The only new hardware installed (supplied by Emydex industrial hardware partner MWS Ltd) being three new industrial touch-screen computer terminals. A single OCM was supplied to enable labelling of boxes (both offal and primals).

Rizvan Khalid (Senior Director) of Euro Quality Lambs commented “having met the Emydex team and seen all of the product development, project delivery and customer support teams based in Dublin, we felt confident that we could work with Emydex. Since then our project has been implemented in a timely manner, and has met and in some cases surpassed our expectations.” Khalid added “One differentiator with Emydex over the other factory floor systems we evaluated was the ability and ease with which the Emydex system can be modified and configured to work in line with our existing EQL business processes. We had many new ideas that we wanted to incorporate into our new system. The flexibility inherent in Emydex means everything is possible”

Commenting on the installation, David McMahon CEO with Emydex in Dublin said “Rizvan and the management team in EQL had a very clear vision of their system requirements from the outset of the project, that was the automated collection of production data from factory door-to-door, enabling accurate reporting on production yields, quality and traceability information in real-time.”
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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7.5m Head of Livestock

Those in charge of the mammoth administrative task of buying and tracing 7.5m head of livestock per year in Ireland have emerged intact from the horse burger controversy.

Much of the credit must go to companies like Emydex in Dublin.

Emydex software is designed to manage food production processes from door to door, from arrival of animals to the abattoir, through kill line, boning hall, warehousing and dispatch.

The system includes real-time links to both the government-run animal movement and tracking systems as well as quality assurance schemes, and provides for full meat traceability.

It manages the complex system of payments to farmers, but also enables customers to run their food production lines more efficiently; manage, control and report on stock; analyse their yields and costs; and report on food chain traceability and factory and operator performance.

Today, Emydex is running in four out of the top five meat producing companies on the island of Ireland, and in more than 40 plants spread all over Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France.

The company is celebrating its rollout in the Dawn Meats Group, one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British beef, pork and lamb in Europe, and an Emydex customer since 2007. It is planned to complete the Emydex roll-out across the group in 2013, including the lamb processing in Ballyhaunis.

Emydex also supplies software to Kepak, and the Dunbia Group and Moy Park in the UK. The software runs on any compatible hardware system.

Just how complex the challenge is can be seen in the very first step of the meat chain, procuring livestock and paying for them.

Each year, Irish export plants buy almost 1.4 million cattle, 2.5m sheep, and 3.5 million pigs …

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Emydex rollout across Dawn Meats Group

Dawn Meats Brand
An Emydex customer since 2007, the Dawn Meats Group is one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British Beef, Pork and Lamb in Europe.

Last year (2012) was a milestone year for the group as it secured a 5 year €300m contract for McDonalds, in addition to building a new state of the art patty plant at Carroll’s Cross, Co Waterford, as well as acquiring West Devon Meats in South West England. This follows the group’s acquisition of the Duerden beef abattoir in the Lake District, and the upgrade of their beef slaughter and processing plant in Cardington, UK in 2011.

Dawn Meats began rolling out Emydex’s Production Management software system across the group during 2008. Four years later, Emydex continues to operate as the group standard factory floor data capture and production and traceability reporting system in 11 of the 13 plants within the group including Dawn Meats France.

From Carcass intake, through boning, further processing, packing, box stock and dispatch, Emydex captures and reports on production data, enabling Dawn Meats to analyse and manage their stocks, yields and dispatches, whilst maintaining full food chain traceability.

Commenting on the Emydex system roll-out Shane Slattery, Group IT Manager with Dawn Meats said “Emydex is a central pillar of our strategic IT plan going forward, and our goal now is to concentrate on completing the roll-out of Emydex to our primary processing sites by year end. This plan may seem aggressive, but we believe that it is achievable on account of the inherent flexibility of the core Emydex product to handle any differences in the business processes required in our disparate sites”.

Plans are to complete the Emydex roll-out across the group in 2013, with the implementation of the system at Dawn’s Lamb processing plant in Ballyhaunis in Ireland, as well as the roll-out of Emydex’s kill line & payments systems to all of Dawn’s slaughter plants within the group.

For more information on the Emydex kill line system contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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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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