Motulus will soon approach its 10th anniversary. We thought this would be a great opportunity to sit down with 2 of our founders, CEO Benjamin and Chairman Wim, to understand how the journey began and their perspective on Motulus’ role in the aviation industry.
Benjamin (on the right in the above picture): About ten years ago, “advanced mathematics” on one side and “enterprise software” on the other side were two different worlds that had little to do with each other. I knew the “software for large organisation” side quite well and when Wim showed me the amazing things that advanced mathematics can bring to the table, it was clear that there would be an enormous opportunity in offering high performant software solutions, powered by advanced mathematics inside.
I understood that Wim saw the same opportunity, from his “advanced mathematics” point of view. We first worked on a small project together and then decided to bring Przemyslaw on board and start a company together: Motulus, a company with a focus on innovative optimization solutions, built on advanced mathematics.
Wim (on the left in the above picture): But just the mathematics is not enough. The solvers need to be integrated with a user interface and a backend. Making everything work together in a smooth way can create a very powerful solution. Understanding the underlying mathematics means that we can rapidly innovate across the full stack.
Benjamin: A couple of years after founding Motulus, we were contacted by an airline that struggled to find a solution to automate and optimize their crew scheduling.
We looked into the challenge and the existing solutions out there and we were convinced that, thanks to recent innovations in mathematics, we would be able to deliver features no other product in the industry had and which would help the airline to solve their complex challenge of “multi-base, mixed-fleet, complex network, etc.” crew scheduling.
We succeeded in delivering an unique, innovative solution and since then, Motulus put the full focus on delivering optimization solutions for the aviation industry under the MOTULUS.AERO brand.
Wim: Since the problems in airline industry have to be solved for every flight, day in day out, it is a natural context for a Software-as-a-Service solution, where airlines use our tools in their regular operations and plans. This makes an integrated solution that saves the operational cost everyday as plans are built in the most effective way.
Benjamin: I think we bring a relevant shot of innovation in the aviation software landscape.
On one hand, it’s quite obvious that optimization brings a lot of value to the aviation sector, as it is a very capital-intensive industry. So adding a couple of percentages of efficiency makes a big difference. On the other hand, regulations, lots of rules and constraints and complex requirements make that optimization challenges for aviation are really hard, so it is typically not an easy problem to solve.
That is exactly where Motulus shines: solving complex challenges that can generate a lot of added value.
Benjamin: I think the key is our unique team. We’re not a university spin-off but most of the people of the core team have a PhD, we have some professors on board and what is important is that this strong theoretical background is combined with a very hands-on approach. We also have a number of members of the team that have worked in airlines, software product companies and consultancy agencies.
I’m convinced that this unique combination is the core foundation of our company and makes that we are a world-class innovative challenger in our domain.
Wim: the problems are so hard that taking shortcuts is not an option. To find the best operational solution, day in day out, that offers savings for the airline for every planning period, we need an approach that is based on the fundamentals. Solving these problems in a team is attractive for skilled people.
Benjamin: That’s an easy one: the pandemic in 2020. We had put our full focus on building solutions for aviation, stopped working for other industries and then the Covid-19 shut-down happened.
The good thing was that people in the industry knew that we had a valuable solution ready to roll-out, which made that our first airline customers signed up and started to use our solution in production when the situation went “back to normal”, beginning 2021.
That can be considered as the “real start” of MOTULUS.AERO.
Wim: the airline industry is an industry where many actors need to be synchronized. The motion of passengers, aircraft and crew need to be coordinated. Similarly, within an airport the motion of all the planes and ground handling needs to be optimized. The opportunities for optimization are endless.
Benjamin: Crewpal, which is our mobile and web application, used by crew members to enter their requests, bids and preferences is very complementary with our core product, the optimized crew scheduling system.
We think it is very important to take into account a crew member’s preferences and requests when creating its individual work schedule. Some airlines have a system to collect and manage this information. Our optimizer can retrieve the information from their existing system. But we also discovered that there are still a lot of airlines that collect this information via email or telephone calls which implies a lot of effort from the scheduling team.
For these airlines, our Crewpal solution, which has some interesting features, really makes sense. Certainly in combination with MCrew, our optimized crew scheduling product.
Wim: Since we do integrated crew scheduling, i.e no separate pairing and rostering step, we can create for each crew member a personalized journey that takes into account the preassigned activities of that crew member and all their preferences.
With a mobile app, we can then take directly all the preferences into account.
This is not possible with a separate pairing and rostering step. Nevertheless we can also generate efficient pairings for crew to bid for in our Crewpal app as this approach is relevant for some airlines.
Benjamin: The very strong theoretical background of our team and experience in the aviation industry, combined with a very hands on approach means that our company succeeds in combining and balancing research, development and supporting our customers.
Wim: Close collaboration with domain experts at the airlines that know the business inside out can also lead to rapid innovation.
Thank you Wim and Benjamin
Back