NIM Labs Launches NIM 7.0 to Fast-Track Production Scheduling

The studio management platform allows producers and resource managers to visually sort projects, licenses, people, and more without spreadsheets.

NIM Labs aims to restore order to the scheduling process with NIM 7.0, an update to their studio management platform that helps creative studios track projects with ease. The new tools make scheduling “drag-and-drop simple,” allowing teams to quickly assign people and assets to their projects without overextending themselves.

“Visibility into a studio’s capacity is really important when you’re working across a lot of people,” says Andrew Sinagra, co-founder of NIM Labs. “NIM 7.0 takes you out of the spreadsheets and offers a powerful way to visualize who and what is available at any given moment, so your decisions can be faster and more informed.”

Originally created by Ntropic, NIM was designed to give studios a complete overview of their performance from finances to production, so they can accurately measure the health of their organization any time they want. NIM 7.0 increases visibility into these key processes, helping creative studios stay competitive on a global scale.

NIM 7.0 updates include:

New Scheduling Tools

The scheduling UI has been completely revamped and designed to provide a simpler way to manage users, events, jobs and resources. Users can now drag and drop artists onto jobs, check utilization rates for everything from people to licenses, rapidly create events with common crews or departments and more.

“When you don’t have the right information in front of you, you can easily waste your time searching for it,” adds Sinagra. “NIM 7.0 puts everything in one place, cutting down on conversations that don’t need to happen. Why ask IT how many licenses you have left, when the data is already there? This is a better way to work.”

Job-Centric Scheduling

A new job view, which offers a detailed look at all events that are associated with specific jobs, allowing producers and heads of production to more fluidly manage timelines, crew assignments and resource allocation by person or team. This view also gives leaders an up-to-date look at the overall capacity of a department, which can even reflect temporary drops while staff is on vacation. Using this information, users can easily plot out their progress even when working with a global freelancer pool.

Presets and Filters

To save time, users can now create preset groups or “bundles” for users, crews and resource combinations that can be quickly added to the schedule, removing the need to reinvent the wheel on common assignments. A new filter panel has also been added, so users can build complex filter rules that can be saved or shared with others. This panel provides a new level of granularity, giving producers more control across the schedule, calendars, job list, contacts and users.

User and Resource Utilization

Detailed utilization metrics are now accessible in NIM 7.0, allowing teams to view the total utilization of users or resources each day. This information is displayed against each asset’s capacity with color-coded indicators that highlight over- or under-utilization.

Event Conflict Management

NIM 7.0 introduces a robust conflict detection system that helps users define custom conflict scenarios based on user or resource assignments, event status and event limits. When a conflict is detected, the system immediately alerts the user and adds the conflict to the conflicts panel, where it can be managed and resolved.

Import and Merge Bid Line Items

Users can now import bid line items from an external spreadsheet into their estimate, making it easier to add shot list specifics. As line items are imported, the new UI will automatically flag any issues a user needs to address if they want to bring their data in clean.

“NIM lets us customize our unique pipeline in a way other ‘off the shelf’ products cannot — from the UI to project set-ups,” said Lindsey Morrow, Senior Producer at Flawless AI. “Plus, because we can track the 'estimated vs. actual times' spent on a task, we can not only keep on schedule for a show, but continually measure and refine our process, which helps us get more efficient every day.” 

NIM 7.0 is available now and delivered as a virtual machine. Annual licenses are $30/month per user and monthly licenses are $40/month per user. Annual and monthly licensing can be mixed to cover individual studio needs.

NIM is currently used at Digital Domain, Glassworks, Tilt Shift, Assembly, Logan, Taylor James, Blockhead and more. NIM Labs is headquartered in Los Angeles.

Source: NIM Labs

L'Wren Alexa's picture

Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologist—L'Wren brings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.