The below is an extract taken from the article 'User Interface Is Key To Growing Document Complexity' in Marine Electronics and Communications - April/May 2010 to read the full article please open the attachment.

K Line LNG Shipping (UK) chose to replace its safety and document management solutions with the ShipNet system. K Line’s decision was based on finding a provider which could cover all its safety reporting and document management requirements, combined with user friendly functionality and reliable replication ship to shore.

According to Geoff Whitelaw, general manager at K Line LNG Shipping, “We recognised the need for a more efficient means of distributing, controlling and monitoring our SMS systems. After receiving presentations from most leading marine software suppliers, we decided that the system offered by ShipNet was the best to meet our needs. We are extremely pleased with the progress and support we have received from the company in initiating our system.”

Neill Tomlin, managing director of ShipNet, claims that the company’s system is distinguished from others by its simplicity and low cost. “The principle is different to what everybody else has done,” he says. “All in-house developers and competitors have created specific elements or applications that undertake non-conformity and other reporting, or audit inspections.

” We saw that the requirements, and more importantly, the interpretation of the requirements, by customers were very varied…so we built a toolset which allows us, with no programming, to configure a system effectively, which comes from a baseline best practice and then can be adjusted to meet a customer’s requirements.”

ShipNet is designed to ensure that information is entered only once and that the power of the system is in the routing and statistical reporting, says Mr Tomlin. “Our successes are with companies such as Maersk, which have very strict procedures and very high standards.” ShipNet is also designed to communicate information between multiple parties. For example, K Line and some of its charterers are ShipNet users, so information can be distributed automatically between them.