The 4th Shipdex Conference took place at the MAN Diesel PrimeServ Academy in Augsburg, Germany on Feb. 16, where the Shipdex protocol was declared ready and available for use. Shipdex (Ship Data Exchange) is international business rules (protocol) -based and fully compliant with S1000D, developed to standardize the exchange of electronic technical data within the shipping community. The Shipdex protocol aims to ensure a high quality of technical and logistical data and simplify the exchange of data within the industry. For application service providers, Shipdex is a basic specification for implementing data interfaces from technical manual solutions to maintenance and purchase or any fully fledged ERP systems.