A lateral resupply blood supply chain network design under uncertainties

Abstract

The vibrant subject of blood banking and blood distribution is addressed where lateral resupply of blood products is allowed. In this paper, we studied a blood supply chain network design consisting of four conventional levels each of which corresponding to one entity in the real world: donors, blood collection facilities, blood centers, and hospitals. The blood supply chain network considered two important properties: ABO-Rh factors and shelf lives of blood products. Moreover, an integrated inventory system for sharing hospitals’ inventory levels is considered to investigate the two performance indicators of the network in terms of cross-matching and outdated units. This type of inventory system is known as “Lateral Resupply” permitting a hospital to satisfy its demand by the other hospitals’ inventories in the absence of the required product at the blood center and its excess in any hospital. The proposed mixed-integer mathematical programming model entails three objectives referring to the three underlying concepts of sustainability, additionally, to cope with uncertainties and multi objectiveness, a scenario-based optimization approach and revised multi-choice goal programming technique were employed, respectively. Finally, the results confirmed that the lateral resupply virtue improved the performance indicators.