Transport managers are often tasked with determining:
- Which transport modes should I use? Should I purchase vehicles and hire drivers to fulfil the transport demands? Or should I rent vehicles and outsource the transportation? Or both?
- How many vehicles do I need to meet the transport demand of my organisation?
- What is the most optimal mix of transport modes from a cost-efficiency perspective?
In 2021 OSCE Mission in Kosovo (OMiK) worked together with Fleet Forum to develop a transport optimisation tool that gives the organisation insight in the right size of the fleet.
The Cost Optimisation Tool enables users to get insight into the optimal mix of transport modes for passenger transport by inputting summary historical data for any period of time (one day, one week, one month etc.). The output of the tool allows users to compare their current state to the optimal one to gauge efficiencies and use the outputs of the tool to make recommendations and optimise.
The Cost Optimisation Tool is intended for Transport Managers and Finance Managers.
This guide and the Cost Optimisation Tool were developed with the support of Fleet Forum and ETH Zurich. Fleet Forum wishes to commend OSCE for making these knowledge resources available to other organisations wishing to optimise their transport.
Unique features / opportunities of the tool
The tool is a transport optimisation tool, not a fleet tool. What we mean is the tool allows users to include different modes, not just purchasing vehicles.
The tool has a number of operational constraints that can be customised based on your organisational context. These include:
- Group trips into three categories based on duration and set the average duration per type of trip
- For how many hours is a vehicle blocked if a certain mission is performed by a certain transportation mode
- How often is a single leg between point A and pint B performed if a certain mission is performed by a certain transportation mode
The tool takes into consideration the concurrency of missions. In a world of perfect utilisation, the demand for transport would be constant, which would allow Transport Managers to make maximum use of the transport means. In practice, there are peaks in transport, for example, there might be more requests for transport at 9am in the morning then 2pm in the afternoon, or on Mondays and less so on Fridays. Through this tool, Transport Manager can indicate what the concurrency of the missions are.
Replies have been locked on this page!