Vehicle Routing Problems are difficult to solve, especially at scale with real-world constraints. Both for humans and software. In this video, I explain why VRPs are challenging, what technology solutions exist and how you can solve them easily in practice. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcdw...

Sunday evening, a long-lost friend messaged me: "I wrote a Hockey Training scheduling application in weekend with Timefold and Claude." In a weekend. It's an amazing age we live in! He even documented the whole thing. Here's how he did it: medium.com/@bavo.bruyla...

At the Dublin Java User Group, Tom will solve Santa's scheduling and routing optimization problems with Timefold Solver (our open source solver previously known as OptaPlanner) on Tue 27 jan: www.meetup.com/dublinjavaus...

How fast is Java 25? timefold.ai/blog/how-fas... by @tomcools.be

We did it! Our shift scheduling API now supports over 100 business constraints. Whether your dataset is using 1 or 100 constraints, with 50 or 50'000 employees, with 200 or 200'000 shifts, it delivers a near-optimal solution in minutes or less. app.timefold.ai

🚀 Our new API for Pickup and Delivery Routing is out! 🚀 It optimizes in-route pickup and delivery of people or packages. For example: - Non-emergency medical transport to bring patients to the hospital - School bus optimization - Food delivery - Parcel delivery app.timefold.ai/models/picku...

The Sunk Cost Fallacy After you've worked weeks on an improvement that turns out as not much of an improvement... ... this Pull Request appears ... Mario Fusco @ #devoxx

"Why can't you just have ChatGPT generate a schedule for you?" In this podcast, Mackenzie Jackson and I didn't just drink sake, we also covered complex scheduling and routing with AI and founding a company. Watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=58CM...

"Why haven't they fixed this yet?" @smarks.bsky.social and Maurice talking about ConcurrentException etc in #java at #devoxx Great talk, but when they cover Vector and Hashtable, I can't stop and think: "Why haven't they deprecated this yet?"

#Devoxx talk trial run in front of a "live" audience. 😅 If you are at the conference, do say hello when you see me. 😊

An Open Source project needs a real-time chat for the community to come together. So we created a Discord chat for Timefold Solerv. To ask questions. To discuss ideas. Or to figure out how to hack the solver to run your crazy experiment. Join us: discord.gg/976RcEVVHW

In the Optimization4All podcast, Cristina Radu and I talked about Operations Research, starting a company and Timefold. Watch the podcast: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrLb...

Today is the day... 🤩☕️🔥 #Java

If it takes 10 000 hours to master a craft, what do you get for 10 000 commits? Timefold Solver, our Open Source solver for complex scheduling and routing problems, just reached 10 000 commits on GitHub: github.com/TimefoldAI/t...

Can the optimal solution for a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) have crossing paths? No, it cannot. Because of the Triangle Inequality principle. But in reality, it can. Because there's road infrastructure: highways, one-way streets, etc. In the real-world, solution optimality is rarely obvious.

A great plan is worthless if you can't explain why. For the operators to trust your software, they need more than a button to "Schedule with AI" that generates the optimized schedule for their employees. They need explainability. Learn how by @tomcools.be : timefold.ai/blog/explain...

Vehicle Routing Problems in production: When research meets reality. Our webinar yesterday covered: - Maps integration - Time calculation - Hard constraints in reality - Multi-objective optimization - Real-time planning See the recording: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l12G...

That moment when your backend algorithms optimize a vehicle routing dataset with thousands of visits... ... and your frontend turns into a piece of modern art.

This is what happens if you use floating point numbers (int, double in #Java) for financial data. Use decimal numbers (BigDecimal in Java) instead.

Where does your enterprise stand on the scheduling maturity ladder? Are your resources scheduled manually? With or without constraint verification? Or automatically? With or without optimization? Discover the 4 Levels of Scheduling: timefold.ai/blog/the-4-l...

Can LLMs solve scheduling or routing problems? Can GenAI help companies save millions of dollars by optimizing Vehicle Routing, Shift Rostering or Job Scheduling to increase productivity and retention? @tomcools.be and I tried it out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12A... #VRP #AI #PlanningAI #DevoxxFr

Our team has just released Declarative Shadow Variables (Preview) with our #opensource Timefold Solver 🤩 . It's easier than ever to calculate shadow variables. As a preview feature, the API is not yet set in stone and we are actively looking for feedback. 👍 github.com/TimefoldAI/t...

Most publications of the Vehicle Routing Problem only cover the tip of the iceberg. Benchmarks and academic papers typically only handle vehicle capacity (CVRP) and time windows (VRPTW) But production deployments also need to deal with many other requirements. #OperationsResearch #PlanningAI #AI

Discover how AI can step up when LLMs fall short in scheduling. Join @tomcools.be and dive into Timefold, a Java-based AI solver that optimises schedules using advanced math. See live demos and enhance your problem-solving skills! Session details @ buff.ly/TePAVmY

Our Open Source solver now has a dedicated home: solver.timefold.ai It's a place for the Timefold Solver community, with everything you need to build a solution for any planning, scheduling or routing optimization problem. Is there anything missing that you would like to see on solver.timefold.ai?

How to minimize driver costs for the Vehicle Routing Problem. In this video, I cover dealing with a mixed fleet of employees and contractors. As well as overtime costs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Foa... #OperationsResearch #VRP #FieldService #AI #PlanningAI

The quickstarts readme for our open source solver had a make-over! It's now easier to find the right example and start solving your scheduling or routing problem with #PlanningAI. Try it out: github.com/TimefoldAI/t...

How I built an AI company to save my open source project On this day, 3 years ago, my world fell apart. It was a Thursday. I just finished my second meeting that morning, looked at my inbox and realized it was over. My life’s work was over. Read more: timefold.ai/blog/how-i-b...

Allons-y! 🥖🍷🇫🇷 Looking forward to speaking at DevoxxFR for the first time. It's gonna be an #llm #ai and #java presentation on creating schedules together with my co-speaker @geoffreydesmet.bsky.social 😁 Looking forward to sharing that with you all. 😇

One of the most interesting feats of engineering recently was explained Saturday at #Fosdem for project Liliput for #Java OpenJDK: How to put 25 bits into 2 bits. How they are circumventing the trade-off between usability and memory usage. 🧵

The new overview of our REST API for Field Service Routing is online. Take a look: app.timefold.ai/models/field... It covers almost every constraint. From time windows, fairness and technician costs to real-time planning and many other #PlanningAI requirements. Just pick and choose what you need.

A reddit user is asking about your experience with Timefold: www.reddit.com/r/optimizati... Reviews welcome!

How to handle Employee (un)availability in automated Shift Rostering. It's not as simple as it looks! www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyk7... #PlanningAI #ai #timefold

📰 New article by Kevin Nash, Jun Zhang Optimizing operational planning for sustainability: e-switch’s AI solution with Timefold and AWS #AWS #Alps #AWSInSwitzerlandAndAustria

The new Maven Central doesn't have download statistics any more it seems. Any other open source projects running into that problem? Is there a fix?

What does it mean for something to be Turing complete? I answer this question, and more, through a series of fully interactive Turing machine simulations! Play, pause, step forwards and backwards, and even write your own Turing machine programs in my latest blog post. samwho.dev/turing-machi...

New Video! 🎄 Helping Santa solve his Traveling Salesmen Problem and helping him find a better route with #java and #timefold. I live-code a simple example using #quarkus and #leafletjs for the visualization. 👨‍🏫 Catch it here and let me know what you think! 👇 www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYot...

To everyone who's been in IT for a while: Which hype cycles have set your project(s) off course for a few months because management believed not doing it would disrupt the business? And how did it turn out?

For Open Source foundations like Apache snd Commonhaus to effectively work as a DMZ between multiple contributing companies, they need trademark control. But if only 1 company does all the contributing work, giving up trademark control is simply unacceptable... Catch22

The Operations Research Advent started earlier this week. (spoiler) Here are the solutions in Timefold in #java, #python and #kotlin: github.com/timefold-san...

Santa needs help with his routing and scheduling problem!

Apache Maven 4.0.0-rc-1 just dropped! I’ve been running 4.0.0 betas for a while now and definitely loved it so far. Make sure to give the new features and major improvements a swing yourself: maven.apache.org/download.cgi If you run into anything make sure to reach out! #Java #Apache #Maven

Timefold Solver at Milano Java User Group on 10th December, by Simon Tiffert. Free entrance. www.meetup.com/it-IT/edotec...

My first video for #Timefold is online now. 😊 You'll learn why scheduling employee shifts is more tricky than you might expect. Honestly it makes me dizzy again thinking about it 😅 More videos about how Timefold can do all this for you with an API: Soon! youtu.be/at-2ch6rlZo?...

Today, 2 years ago, I left Red Hat and took the leap. I traded working at a great, friendly company for no guarantees and no way to provide for my family. Just a dream and a business savvy co-founder. The first test is to take the leap. But I had to save my life's work, OptaPlanner. 1/3

Timefold Solver, our #opensource AI solver you can use to solve planning problems (vehicle routing, scheduling, ...) just crossed 1k stars! 🤩 Good to see more people discover it every day. Learn more about this #java #explainableai library: docs.timefold.ai/timefold-sol...

Generative #AI versus #PlanningAI. Use the right tool for the job. For field service routing, shift scheduling, last mile routing, machine job scheduling, maintenance scheduling, ... take a look at our open source solver in #java, #python or #kotlin: timefold.ai/open-source-... #GenAI

New Timefold docs website: Same high-quality PlanningAI content, with a more user-friendly design! Give it a try: docs.timefold.ai What do you think? What documentation do you want us to improve or expand?

A short explanation of Real-Time Planning: www.youtube.com/shorts/rhwKo...

A video introduction to Continuous Planning. We use it for solving the Vehicle Routing Problem, Job Shop Scheduling, Maintenance Scheduling and other Operations Research use cases. www.youtube.com/shorts/p6V7V...