In football performance centres, talented youngsters train every day to improve their skills and realise their dream of a professional career. To make this possible, players of different age groups need to be transported safely and reliably to and from training at specific times. Many professional clubs use their own or external transport services for this purpose. Different vehicle classes are used, depending on the size and requirements of the club.
This logistical task is an important part of the clubs' promotion of young talent. However, transporting young talent also involves considerable costs and CO2 emissions. Fuel consumption and journey times in particular must always be taken into account when planning. Inefficient organisation of the tours leads to unnecessary additional costs and an increased ecological footprint. This is why the clubs not only invest in the development of young people, but also in well thought-out and sustainable planning of the transport service.
Planning challenges in transport services
Route planning for the youth transport service regularly presents clubs with complex challenges. Journeys must be planned precisely in order to optimally utilise the vans. Players should be picked up in a sensible order to avoid unnecessary detours and longer journey times. However, this is not always easy: if a player moves house, joins the performance centre or is absent due to injury, routes often have to be adjusted spontaneously. This requires flexible and dynamic planning.
Route optimisation as a solution
Those who plan journeys without suitable software often find it difficult to identify optimisation potential. This is precisely where the TransIT route planning system comes in. It was specially developed to help clubs organise their transport services efficiently. TransIT makes it possible to import and automatically process transport data and information on drivers and vehicles via Excel. The software optimises the routes in terms of costs and driving time, which can then also be adjusted manually.
Specific example: savings through route optimisation
Imagine you use 10 vehicles and drive an average of 100 km per trip. With a savings potential of ‘only’ 10 %, this results in 100 km for the outward journey only, i.e. 200 km per day for the outward and return journey. At an average speed of 50 km/h, this results in a time saving of 2 hours.
The basic costs for the transport service are €12.50 per hour and €0.50 per kilometre. Thanks to optimised planning, €25.00 in time costs and €50.00 in kilometre costs can be saved daily for the outward journey.
Extrapolated over the year (with 250 training days), this means a reduction in costs of €6,250 for the time and €12,500 for the distance travelled. In total, a tour optimised by 10% can therefore save €18,750 in costs.
This is an example based on the assumption that the savings factor is still low. As a rule, significantly higher savings potentials can be achieved and tours (vehicle deployments) can also be completely eliminated.
With TransIT, clubs can not only cut their costs considerably, but also reduce their CO2 consumption - an important step towards more sustainable youth development.
