Geoffrey De Smet
@geoffreydesmet.bsky.social
PlanningAI expert, Timefold co-founder, OptaPlanner creator, complex scheduling and routing, Operations Research, Java, Kotlin, open source, international speaker
We've fixed an important bug in Timefold Solver 2.3.0, that started over 10 years ago in OptaPlanner. For rare datasets, it didn't optimize well. For example, in the dataset below, the fix has 38% less travel time (57 hours and 6 minutes). At $50 per hour, that’s a gain of $2,855.
Can you divide and conquer a big Vehicle Routing Problem? Just split it into pieces, solve each piece separately and glue the solutions back together. What could go wrong? youtu.be/nRSL5qnoGLI
How (not) to decompose a vehicle routing problem
YouTube video by Timefold
youtu.be
What if we train our technicians more regularly? Why does that affect our vehicle routing optimization? How does it affect our productivity, in dollars? timefold.ai/blog/how-ups...
How upskilling technicians unlocks field service routing efficiency
In telecom, utilities, and HVAC, not every technician can handle every job. What is the cost of skill gaps that compound into a routing inefficiencies?
timefold.ai
Multi-objective optimization made easy. Coming soon to the Timefold developer platform. Not just for our Field Service Routing, Employee Shift Scheduling and Pickup and Delivery Routing APIs. For any scheduling problem.
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...
Solve a Vehicle Routing Problem with AI
YouTube video by Timefold
youtube.com
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...
NP-hard made easy via Timefold and Claude Code
NP now stands for “no problem”
medium.com
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...
DubJUG 262: How we optimized Santa's travels in Java with Timefold, Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 6:15 PM | Meetup
In time honoured fashion, our first DubJUG events of the year are linked with the jChampions Conference, and today we're announcing our second visiting Java Champions of 20
meetup.com
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...
Pick-up and Delivery Routing: out-of-the-box PlanningAI by Timefold
Assign pick-up and delivery jobs to drivers, optimizing for increased productivity and reduced travel time.
app.timefold.ai
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...
Digital Identities, Fraud, and the Future of AI with Veriff & Timefold: The Secure Disclosure
YouTube video by The Secure Disclosure | Cyber, Sake, More.
youtube.com
"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...
Geoffrey De Smet: From a hobby to building a company
YouTube video by Optimization4All
youtube.com
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...
How to build trust in planning optimization: Explainable PlanningAI
Optimization algorithms can spit out mathematically brilliant schedules, but if planners can’t see the rationale, those “perfect” plans end up in the…
timefold.ai
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...
Vehicle Routing Problems in production: When research meets reality
YouTube video by Timefold
youtube.com
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...
Release Timefold Solver 1.22.0 · TimefoldAI/timefold-solver
We're even more excited than usual to bring you this release. Sure, it has the usual fixes and improvements, but it also brings... drumroll please... Declarative shadow variables (Preview) We've he...
github.com
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?
