NYK Launches Ship-management Platform NiBiKi

Japenese shipping company Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) has announced the launch of its new ship management platform ‘NiBiKi’, which is expected to reduce complications for crew members.

The  new platform NiBiKi is useful for the onboard crew helping them to work comfortably and concentrate on ship operations, said a press release from the company.

The data will be shared with five ship-management companies* overseeing about 260 vessels to realize further safety, it said.

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 some inefficiencies.

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.

Moreover, 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.

NiBiKi is a platform that digitalizes applications, approval, and operation workflow within the safety management system. By simply 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 NiBiKi system enables data to be shared between the ship-operation company and the management company, and accumulated for high-quality big data analysis.