Visma ReSolve

In multiple industries employees are traveling to different locations performing tasks during their workday. The routes such employees travel have traditionally been planned manually which is an extremely difficult and complex task. With just 3 employees and 30 tasks, the number of possible routes to travel exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.

Today, Visma Optimization Technologies offers route optimization services to the home health care, craftsmen and cleaning industry in Europe. These route optimization services are based on techniques from AI and Operations Research and the results have been remarkable. Employees are able to spend up to 15% more time on performing tasks rather than traveling.

Making a school timetable for the year ahead is a time-consuming and frustrating process for people to do by hand. There are many moving parts such as available rooms, competent teachers, time slots, required subjects, and required hours.

Through Visma InSchool, we have provided an automated timetabling solution that substantially reduces time, effort, and inaccuracy. The solution assigns lessons to rooms, teachers, and time slots based on subjects, room capacities, schedule, and teacher competencies. The solution is currently available to more than 200 schools in Norway, and 150 more schools will onboard throughout 2021.

Each municipality in Norway is responsible for carrying out annual kindergarten admissions, with the goal of allocating children to preferred kindergartens. However, there are national, municipal and kindergarten-specific legislations that complicate the admissions process. Moreover, the suggested allocations are far from optimal and many children are not allocated to their desired kindergarten. As a result, the problem is demanding to solve manually, and it can take months to produce an allocation that satisfies all needs.

To improve the admissions process for kindergartens, we have developed the Kindergarten Admissions Optimizer. It applies techniques from Operations Research to create an optimal allocation of children to kindergartens within seconds, compared to a manual process taking weeks or months. It has also proven to create 12% better allocations. This gives teachers more time to develop learning resources in the kindergarten and maintain close contact with guardians.

For any organisation, managing the workforce in a way that efficiently utilizes the strengths of individual employees while also taking into account preferences, laws and regulations is paramount. Unfortunately, the continuous manual administration of the workforce is complicated, time-consuming and oftentimes a source of frustration, dispute and solutions that are of bad quality or sometimes even illegal. This is why we are developing several AI solutions for automating and optimizing workforce management processes. 

Firstly, we have developed an optimization solver that, within minutes, optimizes shift allocation, thereby assisting schedulers in creating fair and efficient schedules that also adhere to laws. This solution is now being used by Swedish municipalities, and it will soon be launched in the Latvian hospital market as well. Secondly, we are working on optimizing the allocation of people to projects in professional services and in the construction industry. Thirdly, we aim to provide efficient and accurate forecasts of workforce demand and availability. We wholeheartedly believe that this set of powerful tools will revolutionize the way we deal with workforce management, both in business and in the public sector.