Navis’ Agile development methodology helps customers more quickly experience shipping supply chain optimization with latest upgrades Navis, a part of Cargotec Corporation and provider of operational technologies and services that unlock greater performance and efficiency for the world’s leading organizations across the shipping supply chain, announced the availability of N4 3.4, the newest version of its flagship terminal system software. In direct alignment with Navis’ broadened software strategy designed to make global trade smarter, safer and more sustainable for all, N4 3.4 aims to optimize performance across the shipping supply chain; simplifying processes through a combination of operational and IT improvements that provide customers with a more reliable and faster solution, and increased responsiveness to business needs. N4 3.4, the second terminal system release delivered through Navis’ quality-centric Agile development approach, further extends the company’s offerings and capabilities in the areas of automation and optimization; scalability and platform consolidation; performance, upgrades and support; as well as administrative processing. The Agile approach addresses industry needs for faster feature delivery and higher quality, with frequent “sprints” to increase the pace while investing in testing strategy and technology.  The end result is continuous integration and the ability to self-correct to bring maximum value to customers. With N4 3.4, customers will have the ability to handle greater container volumes in a more stable and scalable platform environment. Reduced downtime and maintenance costs, as well as access to real time information on operations status and performance are among some of the additional benefits provided by N4 3.4. New features and enhancements in N4 3.4 include:
  • Automated Horizontal Transport improvements including enhancements to the equipment optimization modules to reduce waiting times in key areas of the terminal, maximize fleet utilization and increase performance.
  • System Health Monitoring Solution is being built to reduce potential outage time through early detection of critical failures and by generating alerts as quickly as possible. Navis will use Zabbix as its primary application monitoring tool.
  • Intrablock Decking is now completely integrated with all allocations, and enables better yard optimization when decking containers within N4. 
  • In-Place Fallback Solution and Rolling Upgrades are part of Navis’ upgrade confidence strategy to make the upgrade process reliable and reduce downtime and risk. Navis is offering an externalized capability to fall back on as a last resort due to upgrade complications – it is available to customers upgrading from previous versions including 2.3-2.5 to 2.6 or 3.1. 
“Our journey to deliver best-in-class supply chain products continues with N4 3.4, and as we learn from previous versions and solicit customer feedback, we continue to find new ways to simplify processes and remove friction between users and N4, ultimately improving business outcomes for our customers,” said Scott Holland, VP of Global Product Management at Navis. “This is just the latest step in our mission to create products that enable our customers to address many of today’s complex industry problems with a set of solutions that embrace simplicity. At the same time, we have our eyes on the future, and have started to define the N4 optimization features that our customers will need in the years to come.”