AI-powered route optimization rescued from 8-month delay
A Polish logistics company's in-house AI project had stalled for 8 months with nothing to show. The lead engineer left, the codebase was untested, and the board was ready to pull the plug. We took over, rebuilt the core engine, and shipped in 6 weeks.
Challenge
What was broken
A 400-person Polish logistics company had been running an internal AI project for route optimization for 8 months. The goal was to reduce fuel costs and dispatcher workload using ML. The lead engineer had just resigned, the two remaining developers were junior and struggling, and the model performed no better than their existing manual process. The board had given a 6-week ultimatum: ship something real or cancel the project and write off the investment.
Our Approach
How we thought about it
We started with a 48-hour codebase and data audit. The core problem was immediately clear: the ML model was heavily overfit to synthetic training data and failed on real-world route edge cases — irregular pickup windows, driver availability constraints, fuel stop requirements. The previous approach was trying to solve a constraint satisfaction problem with a pure ML model, which was the wrong tool. We proposed a hybrid: LLM-powered constraint parsing with classical optimization algorithms (modified Clarke-Wright) for the actual routing.
Solution
What we built
We rebuilt the optimization engine from scratch using LangChain for natural-language constraint parsing (dispatchers could now describe constraints in plain Polish) and a modified vehicle routing algorithm for the actual scheduling. FastAPI served the new backend, integrated with their existing PostgreSQL fleet database. We extended their React dispatcher dashboard with a new route visualization panel. The whole system was containerized and deployed to their existing on-prem servers to avoid any infrastructure change approval delays.
Results
What shipped
The system went live at the end of week 6 with a 2-week pilot on 12 of their 60 routes. Processing time dropped from 4 minutes per route to under 20 seconds. Fuel costs on the pilot routes fell 38% in the first month. The board approved full rollout and added budget for a second phase extending the system to cross-border EU shipments.
System overview
“We had written off the project as a total loss. Sigmalion walked in, understood the problem within days, and shipped something we're genuinely proud of. The board went from cancellation to expansion budget.”
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