Real-time, AI-driven optimization for workforce, route, and resource planning
What is PlanningAI?
PlanningAI is a type of artificial intelligence designed specifically to handle complex planning and scheduling tasks, and to satisfy the constraints of planning problems. Instead of just automating simple, repetitive tasks, it helps you make better decisions by sorting through countless possibilities to find the best solutions. PlanningAI helps businesses across the globe save time, lower costs, and improve efficiency.
FAQ
A complex planning problem arises when you need to allocate limited resources while navigating multiple constraints to achieve a goal. These resources can be people, vehicles, inventory, equipment, or any other assets that need to be assigned efficiently. The challenge is not just finding a feasible solution but finding an optimized solution, one that balances efficiency, cost, and real-world limitations.
Complex planning problems belong to NP-hard problems, where the number of possible solutions grows exponentially as the problem gets bigger. This makes it impossible to find the optimal solution by simply trying every option.
The challenge comes from conflicting constraints, where improving one factor, like cost, can negatively impact another, like speed or resource use.
On top of that, real-world problems are constantly changing, with delays, capacity limits, and shifting priorities making fixed solutions unreliable. Since there’s no simple formula to solve these problems, humans can’t find the best solution manually, and neither can vertical software solutions.
They appear in everything from workforce scheduling and delivery routing to manufacturing processes and event logistics, basically anywhere resources must be allocated efficiently under evolving conditions.
AI-driven solutions can quickly evaluate countless potential scenarios, adapt to real-world disruptions on the fly, and prioritize outcomes that align with your goals for efficiency, cost, or compliance. Traditional Operations Research solutions take at least a year to implement, and have a significant chance of failing, while our AI driven solution has a time-to-market of about 3 months.
Most organizations still rely on spreadsheets, rule-based systems, or rigid enterprise software to handle planning and scheduling. They generate plans that quickly become outdated, require constant manual adjustments, and struggle to balance competing priorities like cost, efficiency, and compliance.
In field service for example, routing is often done with fixed rules that ignore real-time disruptions. Workforce scheduling is notoriously known for defaulting to manual tweaks from human planners. Clearly, these tools weren’t built for complexity and scale.
Solving real-world planning problems
Let’s zoom in on two examples where complex planning problems are found in the real-world.
Retail chains, hospitals, and logistics companies need to schedule thousands of shifts weekly while ensuring:
- Coverage across multiple locations
- Compliance with labor laws (overtime limits, mandatory breaks)
- Employee preferences and skills
- Cost efficiency and minimal disruption
Planners use spreadsheets or basic scheduling tools, constantly adjusting for last-minute changes, leading to inefficiencies, overtime, and compliance risks.
Companies with large mobile workforces (field technicians, delivery fleets etc.) face the challenge of coordinating thousands of daily routes and schedules while considering:
- Traffic conditions and real-time disruptions
- Job priority and customer preferences
- Vehicle capacity and fuel efficiency
- Workforce availability
Routes are planned manually or with static rules, leading to excessive travel time, wasted fuel, and inefficiencies.
AI that makes a difference
A PlanningAI solution proves its worth when it is engineered to adapt to events that happen in day-to-day, real-world operations. Here are four criteria to pressure-test whether it can actually handle complexity, or if it’s just another underperforming software that relies on the AI label for credibility.
A reliable PlanningAI solution continuously updates and optimizes schedules over multiple days or weeks. It adapts dynamically to new data, ensuring efficiency over time. If a tool generates a static plan that becomes outdated the moment conditions change, it’s not true PlanningAI.
PlanningAI allows users to lock specific tasks or resources while optimizing the rest of the schedule. This ensures that critical assignments remain unchanged while everything else adjusts dynamically. If a system forces a full recalculation when changes are made, it lacks true PlanningAI capabilities.
A reliable PlanningAI solution can process last-minute changes without resetting the entire schedule. It integrates urgent updates smoothly, making only the necessary adjustments while keeping the overall plan intact. If it struggles with disruptions and forces manual rework, it’s just a basic scheduling software.
When resources are insufficient to meet demand, PlanningAI doesn’t just flag the problem. It finds the best possible solution given the constraints. If a tool only identifies shortages without offering solutions, it’s not real PlanningAI.
The solution is ready, are you?
The technologies emerging from the AI boom have ushered businesses into a new era.
Automation is now dwarfed by the impact of optimization driven by solutions like PlanningAI.
The uncomfortable truth is that businesses have no choice of whether to adopt it or not. It becomes a question of how soon can they?
The technology is here, and those who leverage it will gain a decisive edge in cost savings, resource efficiency, and operational excellence.
Ready to plan for the future? Talk to us.
Let’s talk about plans.