Timefold
Based in Ghent and part of the Wintercircus ecosystem, Timefold builds constraint-based AI planning tools that optimize complex scheduling problems. These include vehicle routing, employee shift planning, appointment scheduling, and any domain where many variables need to be balanced against each other simultaneously.
The company's technology has roots in OptaPlanner, a widely used open-source constraint solving engine. Timefold brings that capability to a modern SaaS product aimed at logistics operators, healthcare schedulers, and field service companies.
Planning optimization is a technically deep category where even marginal improvements translate directly to cost savings at scale, making the business case for AI-driven tools straightforward for operations-heavy industries.
Key People
Maarten Vandenbroucke - co-founder, ceo
Geoffrey De Smet - co-founder, cto
In the media3
Geoffrey De Smet discusses the Traveling Salesman Problem and vehicle routing using a real-world example of finding an optimal American road trip, demonstrating how constraint-solving algorithms can improve upon published "optimal" solutions by reducing travel time. He also describes an elevator maintenance scheduling application where constraint solvers must balance multiple competing constraints such as customer preferences, maintenance intervals, and penalty fees to create feasible schedules for customers across the globe.
Geoffrey De Smet discusses artificial intelligence and constraint solving, specifically focusing on OptaPlanner as a tool for solving planning problems. He demonstrates a school timetabling application built from scratch that uses constraint solving to optimally assign lessons to time slots while respecting constraints like teacher and student availability, and he discusses other real-world planning problems such as equipment scheduling, job shop scheduling, and vehicle routing that can be solved using similar constraint-solving approaches.
Geoffrey De Smet discusses his 18-year journey developing planning optimization technology, beginning as an open source project that gained recognition through academic competitions and real-world use cases including NASA suppliers, eventually becoming OptaPlanner at Red Hat in 2013 before he and co-founder Maarten launched Timefold.