Japanese shipping company NYK announced it has developed a new platform for ship management, aiming to reduce burdens for onboard crew, thus helping them to work comfortably and concentrate on ship operations. The data will be shared with five ship management companies, overseeing about 260 vessels to realize further safety. On the occasion of the launch, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held on 3 December for the new platform, named ‘NiBiKi’.
As explained, NiBiKi is a platform that digitalizes applications, approval, and operation workflow within the safety management system. By following the instructions and inputting appropriate information in provided forms, crews can correctly apply for approval, and that information can be automatically recorded, thus ensuring appropriate procedures by the crews.
Moreover, the system enables data to be shared between the ship-operation company and the management company, and accumulated for high-quality big data analysis.
In accordance with the Safety Management System (SMS) manual, onboard crew should make a report about safety management to the ship-management company every day. However, the conventional operation flow had inefficiencies, as crews would have to draft various reports and applications, and then send emails with attachments to ship-management companies to obtain approval.
Afterward, crews would need to file printouts of the reports to show third parties, such as auditors. Additionally, the information reported by the ship was not being used efficiently because each vessel and ship-management company would file the data independently.
The NYK Group thus developed NiBiKi to reduce crew reporting workload and enable the data to be easily shared and used by NYK and the ship-management companies.
The company has emphasized on the use of big data for further safety improvements, and will develop a more comprehensive system that includes crew performance records, such as education and drills completed. In addition, under its medium-term management plan “Staying Ahead 2022 with Digitalization and Green” released in March, NYK announced a strategy to achieve sustainable growth.
