i-Production

Integrated information systems, workflow management and
intranet portals for livestock production companies.

You told us...
You wanted to tie all your information together, report on it and have availability to it and then be able to distribute it quickly, easily and securely. And you told us that you didn’t need yet another production record-keeping program for just one part of your system, like sow farms. You wanted to reduce double and triple data entry. And you wanted better communication systems so everyone had quick and easy access to all the information without having to spend hours, days or weeks collecting numbers, creating reports and then—finally—getting them distributed.

We listened...
Our unique industry experience — the CEO of MetaFarms is Dr. Tom Stein — enabled us to take what you wanted and create a practical solution: i-Production.

Unlike anything else in the marketplace today, we created higher-order software to run and manage your entire production system. Our web-based integrated information system is turnkey and ready for you today!

MetaFarms’ award winning i-Production Suite features four integrated applications for swine producers: Enterprise Manager, Sow Manager, Finishing Manager and Sales Manager. All the applications are accessed within your own virtual office, or intranet portal, we call MetaDesk. MetaDesk allows you to securely distribute information on a timely basis. On top of that we go the extra step by adding more valued content, such as marketing data, and we put it at your fingertips.

Enterprise Manager
This application consists of total system reporting, data entry, data transfers, utilities, setup and managing user security.

• Data Entry: Support for main office entry, data entry at a location (producer/site) or both! You may have office data entry for things such as invoices, and on-farm data entry for entering daily mortalities.
• Reports: Total system reporting for specific functions such as accounting, diagnostic, inventory, monitoring, interactive analysis, feed, purchase orders and supervisor communications. Some examples are: inventory sow across your entire system, pig flow by health status and mortality by weeks on feed.
• Data Transfer: Import information such as feed deliveries or sales/carcass data. Export that data to your accounting system.
• Utilities: Features things such as copying diets from one mill to another mill.
• Setup Lookup Tables: Set up your lists over your entire production system. No more separate setup lists for each farm/producer. An example of this would be mortality reasons; our system enables you to have the same reasons across your entire system.
• Setup Production: Identify your physical production system by the producer, site, barn, room and even pen level. Store addresses, phone numbers, contact information and much more in just one place.
• Setup Reports (Lists): Easily access your setup information. View and print lists detailing your entire setup information.
• Security: Set up user groups and assign user security according to your needs. Perhaps you prefer on-site data entry for recording daily mortalities and viewing reports but would like your office to enter invoices and feed deliveries – our security is flexible and password protected.

Sow Manager
MetaFarms has created the next generation record keeping system for sow production. Because we’ve built our core or “back-offce” technology platform to work from an integrated database, you can automatically consolidate/roll-up each of your individual sow farms. We don’t have to “merge” farms or move data around to create these multi-farm services. If you have more than one sow farm in the system that data is already “merged.” Technically, even the word “merged” isn’t correct; the data is organized as one large enterprise database for each customer.

Our software allows you to “close a week” for accounting purposes and then go back at a later date to record the details such as farrowings or services for that week. This, and our unique web-based data entry approach (ten-key and sheet/grid based), separates us from other sow record keeping systems. We also offer a comprehensive collection of reports such as:

Finishing Manager
This application is used to run and manage your company’s nursery and finishing production systems. Accurate and timely detailed group information is key to running your business. Finishing Manager is tightly integrated and linked to the Enterprise Manager, Sow Farm Manager and Sales Manager applications. While the company database holds the basic finishing site information (the sites, the barns, the locations, etc.), Finishing Manager captures a more detailed map of the finishing system, including details down to the pen level. Finishing Manager allows you to record detailed data such as inventory, movements and shipments, daily mortalities, treatments, health scores, feed deliveries, feed bin inventories and more. The unique way the data is stored allows for quick and secure rollup and summary reporting across your system. Finishing Manager can reduce manual data entry by electronically importing external data, such as feed deliveries.

How long does it take you to answer questions such as: How many nursery and finishing pigs do I have in inventory today? How many pigs are available to market this week? How have all my finishing and nursery groups performed over the past year? Can I easily evaluate all my group performance for the past year? What is my feed usage? Do we have issues with death loss/mortality? These answers and more are included as key reporting features of Finishing Manager. Reports include:

• System Inventory Flow
• Automated Group Closeouts
• Cost-of-Production
• Facility utilization (lbs/sq ft/yr)
• Slicing and Dicing (OLAP tool)
• All In/All Out Group Tracking
• Mortality by Weeks on Feed
• Active Group Closeout-to-Date
• Growth Curve Reporting
• Feed Budgeted vs. Actual Feed
• Feed Deliveries with Costs
• Pre-Purchased and Forward Contract
• Reporting by Supervisor, Feed Mill, Sow Farm Flow, Producer, Farm, Site, Pod, Pyramid

Sales Manager
This application brings it all together byallowing you to leverage the markethog sales data you get from the packer and link it to your production information. Sales data or kill sheet data can be manually hand entered or imported electronically from your packer. The software links your production data to it and meshes it with the attributes stored in the other applications. This gives you the ability to “slice-and-dice” carcass data by all sorts of factors, filters and attributes. The most preferred method of data entry is electronic. We support imported files directly from many packers (current packers include: Swift & Co., Tyson Fresh Meats (IBP), John Morell, Maple Leaf, Hormel, Olymel, Hatfield and SPI). In addition to electronic imports, data entry screens allow you to enter data directly into Sales Manager; this is used primarily for non-market sales such as cull sales, genetic sales or sales to employees.

Sales Manager is the analytic tool that helps you turn data into money, and helps you make informed “big decisions” about your future. Some key features include being able to set sales targets, measure your weight distribution, and schedule market shipments. Get the knowledge to answer questions like: Am I making my sales targets? Can I improve my weight distribution? How much more money can I make by sorting better? Several key reporting features of Sales Manager include:

• Summary Kill Sheets
  
• Carcass Weight Distribution
• Live Weight Distribution
• Marketing Report Summary
• Sales Performance Monitor
• Sales Summary
• Weight Distribution by Day

Next Steps
Contact Lisa Butler @ 952-215-3224 or lisabutler@metafarms.com to get started today. We can refer you to some of our current customers if you’d like to talk to them first-hand. We can arrange an on-site or on-farm demonstration. Or we can give you an over-the-phone/online demonstration. Look at the i-Production product brochure.

Frequently Asked Questions