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Future Trends

5th December 2012

What are meat processors and retailers currently looking for from IT systems? What is driving that demand (e.g. legislation, environmental and/or other)? What are the general trends? Future trends?

In our experience meat processors are generally looking for five things when deciding to implement new software systems.

Full integration between Financial and production systems
Dynamic Yield reports that highlight areas where improvements can be made
Dynamic reporting of the status of production against plan
Accurate reporting of stock, with age analysis and availability
Fast, accurate order picking and containerising, ensuring documentation does not hold up deliveries.

The drivers are usually one or a combination of requirements to drive efficiencies, legislative demands, customer demand and ultimately profitability.

Future trends are definitely towards more automation in processing. Emydex are actively involved in shop floor automation projects specifically designed to improve yield, throughput and efficiency.

Minimizing operator involvement is also high on a list of customer priorities, Emydex systems are being used to plan production in the office and then issue those plans to the shop floor to control production using RFID tracking and shop floor automation, with the minimum of operator involvement.

A key benefit that results from implementation of all of the above functionality is traceability that is second to none. Emydex systems record the full history of everything that has happened to a product, whether it is a forward trace, backward trace or mass-balance traceability report. Furthermore, for re-usable containers such as refrigerated containers, crates, dolav’s (pallet boxes), hooks and gambrels, Emydex can even trace the history of every product that has ever been in that container.

Emydex on Demand

The Emydex team have been quietly developing a solution which we expect to have a major impact on small to medium size processors who do not have their own in house IT departments.

Emydex on Demand utilises the power and availability of the internet for the deployment of new standard solutions being developed. Emydex on Demand is a hybrid solution, not running fully as “Software as a Service” (i.e. Hosted in the cloud);

Emydex recognise that processors still need to be able to label boxes even if the network connection is down. As such the new standard Emydex application programs for data collection will run on the data collection terminal itself, not on the internet, the terminals will also have their own off line database allowing operation to continue even if internet connection is not available.

The Emydex database however will be hosted on the Microsoft Azure “cloud platform” this platform is constantly being updated by Microsoft in terms of both hardware and software. Back up is also inbuilt into the Azure package. From a support point of view, Emydex technicians are dealing with one standard database. Software deployment of both shop floor and office applications is achieved simply by selecting a hyperlink which automatically downloads and installs the application programs.

Emydex Apps!

Not quite the same as those thousands of little programs that can be down loaded to your smart phone or tablet but following the same idea. Emydex will be launching a sequence of standard shop floor applications for collecting data, printing labels and reports for commonly used applications in the food industry.

Each application will have a shop floor component and a corresponding back office component. Both components will connect to the Emydex on Demand database running in the cloud. Developed using the combined 130 years of food industry experience inherent in the Emydex design team, the standard apps will have a degree of built in configurability enabling them to meet the majority of users requirements.

Initial apps being developed are:

Outer Case Marking Station
Individual Pack Labelling Station
Recipe Formulation Station
Intake Station
Dispatch Station
Into/Out of Process Station

If a user invests in more than one application they will share the same database, enabling Emydex standard client applications for reporting on Process, Yields and Stocks.

Emydex win Two Awards in One night

19th November 2012

Deloitte Fast 50 Awards

Emydex picked up their first award at the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards, held in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin last Saturday night.

Now in their 13th year, the Fast 50 awards rank the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in Ireland based on percentage revenue growth over a five-year period.

Coming in at 26th place on foot of cumulative revenue growth of 234%, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “this represents an average growth rate of 30% year-on-year over the past 5 years. We’re happy with this level of performance and would be happy to sustain this level of growth for the next 5 years. It was great to be sitting at the same table with companies like Openet and Version 1, stalwarts of the Irish Technology Sector over the past 10 years.”

The reception afterwards was held in the Guinness Gravity bar over-looking the Dublin city skyline. One of the highlights on the evening was a key note speech given by Dr Chris Horn, co-founder of Iona Technologies.

Fingal Business Excellence Awards

Meanwhile across town at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Northwood, Emydex picked up their second award of the evening, winning the Smart Technology Excellence Award, sponsored by IBM, at Fingal Business Excellence Awards 2012.

Hosted by Marty Whelan the black-tie award ceremony was attended by over 400 people. Both Emydex parties joined up at the Crown Plaza later in the evening to celebrate the double award success well into the night.

Pictured at Fingal Business Excellence awards are L-R: Daniel Simonavicius (Emydex Technical Manager), John Carolan (IBM), Siobhan Moore (Chamber President), Lorna Daly (Emydex Customer Support Manager) and Marty Whelan (Broadcaster)

At the Fingal Business Excellence Awards were from L-R: Susan Grennan, Marty Whelan (Broadcaster), Jayne McMahon, Lorna Daly

Emydex Livestock Payment System

12th November 2012

All three flavours of the Emydex multi-species livestock payments system are now live and running in abattoirs spread across Ireland and the UK.

Emydex’s Beef payments system is live in Liffey Meat’s plant in Ballinasloe, as well as Euro Farm Foods in Ireland. The Lamb payments system is live in Scotlamb (Vivers) in Scotland and the Emydex Pig payments system in Dawn Pork and Bacon in Ireland. Since being installed at these plants the system is being considered by a number of plants in the UK and Ireland, and even further afield in mainland Europe and Africa via our re-seller network.

Integration with other Emydex Kill Line Components

The payments system integrates with Emydex’s livestock booking component in order to ensure that any special prices applied at the time of booking are used for the payments. If no special prices are used then the system defaults to a base price per species/category.

When integrated to the payments system the booking component is able to retrieve the previous historical prices paid to a producer and the previous quality of animals received. This is for assistance when special prices need to be negotiated.

Whilst the main kill data is read from the Emydex carcass classification component, the payment system is in effect a stand-alone module, and whilst integration with other Emydex kill line components offers advantages, they are not compulsory. The Emydex payments system is capable of integration with any supplier’s kill line systems.

Settlement Schemes

The payment system itself is highly configurable. The method of calculating the amount to be paid for each carcass is called a ‘settlement schedule’. Whilst it would be simplest to administer if there was a single settlement schedule for all producers, this is often not possible. The system therefore allows any number of settlement schemes to be created and allocated against producers/agents.

Each settlement scheme can be made up of any number of elements. All schemes will start with a default base price/kg for each category of livestock being killed. In its simplest form this price is used to calculate the initial value of the carcass. Base prices can be over-written with prices agreed at time of booking, and/or at time of payment.

There are then a set of adjustment tables that are applied sequentially to the carcass to arrive at the final purchase price. Whilst these adjustments are normally always deductions, the Emydex system will allow bonuses to be paid for specific conditions.

Typical Adjustment tables would be:

Weight range table – with flat rate value paid above specific weights
Eurograde table – with adjustments based upon a grid of confirmation and fat class
Fault table – with adjustments based upon specific fault conditions
Quality table – with adjustments based upon the producers quality status

The Emydex system enables the user to set up as many adjustment tables as required using any parameter either captured in the system or recalled from the database.

The system has now calculated the individual value of each animal and the gross value of the lot. There are now a set of deductions that need to be applied to the gross value.

Again these deductions are created by the user. A specific set of deductions is defined for each settlement scheme.

Typical deductions (which can be specified as per kg or per head) include Haulage, Industry Levies, Veterinary Levies and Clipping Charges.

Pricing Screen:

Report Printing

Dependent upon the species/producer, there may be a requirement for the remittance advice note to show individual animals or grouped animals (e.g. by weight range or grade range). The system can be set to print either or both.

If the user requires it, the remittance advice note and cheque can be incorporated into the same document.

Reports are also available for any deductions specified.

Financial Integration

The Emydex payment system has the functionality to be operated in two modes.

Financial System Prints Cheques

In the first mode Emydex simply prints remittance advice notes and a list of all individual lot payments. This list is also available as a file for export into the user’s financial system for invoicing.

In the case of deductions, an invoice is normally received from the service provider, the Emydex deductions reports can be used to cross check the invoice amounts.

Emydex Prints Cheques

In this scenario the cheque is printed by the Emydex system (either attached to remittance advice note or on separate stationary). The Emydex system will also then print invoice lists with cheque numbers. This list is also available as a file for export into the user’s financial system.

Summary

The Emydex Livestock Payments System eliminates calculation errors by integrating the payment calculation system with the livestock classification system. It is a real time system that enables the payment calculation to be made as soon as a lot has been processed, significantly improving the efficiency of the payments office.

Historical data analysis enables processors detailed views of producer’s deliveries to the plant, such information can be shared with producers to the benefit of both parties.

Emydex shortlisted for Deloitte Fast 50 Technology Awards 2012

6th November 2012

Emydex Technology are delighted to have made the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 award shortlist for 2012. The Deloitte Fast 50, now in its thirteenth year in Ireland, is an awards program honouring business growth, technological innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. The program ranks the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in Ireland based on percentage revenue growth over a five-year period.

“We are very pleased to be included in the top 50 list for the first time. I attended the very first Deloitte Fast 50 award ceremony back in 2001 when working with another Irish Technology company, so it’s great to be back again this time with Emydex. I believe this award rubber-stamps our position as market leader in our chosen specialist field, and celebrates our success on the back of rapid growth and new customers won over the past 5 years. Given the current trajectory of the business, I am confident we will be attending for the next 5 years also.”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO

The announcement of company placements in the Technology Fast 50 awards will be made at a ceremony in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin on November 16th.

On the same evening Emydex Technology is also shortlisted for the Smart Technology Excellence Award at Fingal Business Excellence Awards 2012. Hosted by Marty Whelan the award ceremony will take place at a Black-tie Gala Dinner in the Crown Plaza Dublin Northwood Hotel. Emydex are a previous winner of this award having won it in both 2011 and 2010.

Oliver Carty testimonial video

31st October 2012

Emydex case study with Oliver Carty, a Pork and Bacon producer based in Athlone, Ireland. The video describes how Oliver Carty use Emydex's Production Management software throughout their 2 further processing factories from door to door, covering Intake, Box packing, Order Picking (Scanning) and Dispatch.

The video also shows Oliver Carty’s use of Emydex’s back-office Client software to report on their Stocks, Yields and food Chain Traceability.

Oliver Carty Video

2014 Emydex Team

Highlight Comments on project

We wanted a model that worked completely from backdoor through to dispatch, a system that could give us data and ease of use was of key importance to us."
Justin Lennon, Key Account Manager, Oliver Carty

"We work on any hardware therefore we were able to
re-use their existing hardware which saved them
a lot of cost.

From our perspective, Oliver Carty is a very progressive and innovative food processing company. We recognise their willingness to invest in technologies solutions to give them accurate reporting on their metrics that drive their business. So I view the relationship as a partnership rather than a traditional customer supplier relationship."

Dave McMahon, CEO, Emydex

Emydex Embrace RFID Technology

28th September 2012

Emydex have been a long time user of bar coding technology as a means of maintaining traceability throughout their applications. Whilst we have been aware of, and trialled RFID technology for the past few years, it is only in the last 12 months that Emydex have really started to utilise RFID technology in real-life operational environments, enabling our customers to gain from the benefits of its application.

There are essentially two types of RFID tags, passive and active.

Passive Tags
Passive tags are generally lower cost and have a longer life cycle. They are encoded at manufacture with a unique ID number. This ID number can only be read from the tag when it is inserted into a radio frequency field generated by an RF reader. The efficiency of the reading is dependent upon the strength of the field and the time that the tag is in the field. This generally means that the tag has to be as close to the reader as possible at the time of reading.

Active Tags
Active tags have their own power source in the form of a battery. They are therefore more expensive and have a finite lifetime (battery life). For this reason active tags are best utilised in closed loop systems where the tags never leave the premises. Like the passive tags they are encoded with a unique ID number at the time of manufacture. In addition an active tag can be manufactured with varying amounts of read/write memory, enabling applications to write variable data to the tag for later retrieval direct at a reading point.

By means of the internal battery the tag can broadcast its data at the same time as the tag readers are creating the reading field. This leads to a greater tolerance on reading distance.

Advantages
The greatest advantage of RFID tags over bar coded tags is that the tag can pass through the reading field in any orientation; this makes total automation, without the necessity for operator interaction a viable proposition.

Emydex have used both types of tags dependent upon the application. In the case of carcasses being transported on an overhead conveyor there is no need for active tags. The tags are encapsulated in a heat and impact resistant plug which is embedded in the carcass hooks. As the hooks are on a track system the readers can be positioned very close to the hooks. The tagged hooks recirculate within the system and never leave the site. By positioning data capture equipment close to the reading locations Emydex are able to 100% verify correct carcass data with no possibility of sequencing errors.

Examples of data that can be captured and recorded in the system relative to the hook tag ID are:

Ear Tag
Dentition Data
Tissue Samples
Veterinarian Data

Carcass Inspection Data
Classification Data
Weight Data
Chill Location

After the classification, bar-coded carcass tag labels are printed enabling forward traceability reporting of the carcass, after it has been removed from the original carcass hook.

By situating readers at strategic points on the track it is possible to identify exactly where each carcass (and carcasses in a lot) is located in the abattoir.

Another application for which we are using RFID is the destination control and product/operator traceability of plastic crates (and products within) in a processing department.

Each crate in the system is embedded with an active RFID tag. This tag has a unique ID number and an amount of memory for reading and writing data.

Operators place their output products into the crates. Via strategically placed read/writers and data capture equipment, the contents of the crates can be identified against individual operators and individual processes. The required destination of the crates can be written to the tag, enabling subsequent tag readers to automatically direct the crate through the conveyor control system until it reaches its next process or packing machine destination.

The Benefits
The benefits of automating such processes are a smoother product flow, greater operator efficiency (enabling better throughput and yield), less drip loss due to shorter overall processing times, better traceability. Not only can the system 100% trace the contents of every crate but it can also identify every product that has ever been in that crate, and everywhere that crate has ever been.

This experience has resulted in Emydex investigating alternative applications for RFID, particularly regarding the speed benefits of being able to read multiple tags at the same time and the efficiency benefits of effective automation.

Our initial investigations suggest that every company can benefit from using RFID in closed loop systems (where the tagged containers stay on the site or stay within the group), whether connected with fully automated solutions or not; the readability of RFID tags without the necessity of line of sight (as with bar codes) can have a significant impact on efficiency.

Future Trends

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