Great story and interesting product!
Reminds me of NextMv [1] loved their episode on SWE daily. Can anyone compare them to this and how they’re doing?
I built an AI company to save my open source project
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#12I haven’t tried Timefold but did try a ton of solvers (local and web) a few years ago when trying to optimize MRP schedule. One of the hardest parts was converting my business logic into constraints, especially date based calculations. Instead of explicit constraints, is there a way to provide a calculation that can be minmaxed? If every order has a due date, can I say +/- 3 days = 0, 7 early = 9999 (not allowed), 7+…
You need piecewise linear cost function and auxiliary variables. An experienced practitioner should be able to help you with either mixed integer linear programming or constraint programming
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#13Good job ge0ffrey!
It is a tough niche market where you compete with excel people who have built their careers on their manual planning expertise.
Unfortunately you are pitching not to the end user but to their manager (who will have to force them to drop their spreadsheet mambo jumbo). But I guess this is the case with all AI products nowadays anyways.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#14I haven’t tried Timefold but did try a ton of solvers (local and web) a few years ago when trying to optimize MRP schedule. One of the hardest parts was converting my business logic into constraints, especially date based calculations. Instead of explicit constraints, is there a way to provide a calculation that can be minmaxed? If every order has a due date, can I say +/- 3 days = 0, 7 early = 9999 (not allowed), 7+…
Somewhat related, I looked at a bunch of solvers for vehicle routing with time windows. One thing that surprised me was that the SaaS-based distance matrix calculations were prohibitively expensive. Google charged $0.01 per matrix element.
How do folks normally get the distance matrix? I ended up just using the Mapbox Optimization API instead of using a solver.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#15Whats the name of the algorithm/concept used here? I used simulated annealing, old fashioned algorithm for a college timetable prototype and I'm wondering how this company is using an AI model.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#16Great story, and great choices made.
The lesson in this to young people: you can either sell your time by the hour, or buy other's time and use that productively. The former is very finite, the latter scales.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#17Hmmm... Some co-founders and I are building a UK startup that needs to do skills-based task routing and optimize job assignment for workers who will drive to remote jobs.
Would love to have a quick chat with you or someone at timefold.ai to see if this is something we could potentially use.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#18Whats the name of the algorithm/concept used here? I used simulated annealing, old fashioned algorithm for a college timetable prototype and I'm wondering how this company is using an AI model.
It is a constrained solver. You can argue about what is or is not AI. It varies over time, traditionally driven by in which part of the AI boom/ bust cycle we were, and lately also by which regulations would apply.
My background is in AI but I would have been hesitant calling the rule based systems I wrote to automate financial descisions AI at the time.
In this case, Geoffrey also seemed hesitant in the past to refer to his system as AI (see https://www.optaplanner.org/blog/2017/09/07/DoesAIIncludeCon... ), but somtimes you just have to ride the wave that brings in the funding.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#19Great story, and great choices made. The lesson in this to young people: you can either sell your time by the hour, or buy other's time and use that productively. The former is very finite, the latter scales.
That is true. I think a guy wrote a book about this in the 19th century.
Re: I built an AI company to save my open source project
#20I haven’t tried Timefold but did try a ton of solvers (local and web) a few years ago when trying to optimize MRP schedule. One of the hardest parts was converting my business logic into constraints, especially date based calculations. Instead of explicit constraints, is there a way to provide a calculation that can be minmaxed? If every order has a due date, can I say +/- 3 days = 0, 7 early = 9999 (not allowed), 7+…
Somewhat related, I looked at a bunch of solvers for vehicle routing with time windows. One thing that surprised me was that the SaaS-based distance matrix calculations were prohibitively expensive. Google charged $0.01 per matrix element. How do folks normally get the distance matrix? I ended up just using the Mapbox Optimization API instead of using a solver.
It is always a question of accuracy / convenience. You can start with straight / geodesic distance. One step up is to use open street maps with an offline open source router [1]. But if you want the accurate driving distance with the latest closures / traffic data the big vendors are the only choice.
[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing/offline_routers