Abstract
PurposeThis research studies a location-allocation problem considering the m/m/m/k queue model in the blood supply chain network. This supply chain includes three levels of suppliers or donors, main blood centers (laboratories for separation, storage and distribution centers) and demand centers (hospitals and private clinics). Moreover, the proposed model is a multi-objective model including minimizing the total cost of the blood supply chain (the cost of unmet demand and inventory spoilage, the cost of transport between collection centers and the main centers of blood), minimizing the waiting time of donors in blood donating mobile centers, and minimizing the establishment of mobile centers in potential places.Design/methodology/approachSince the problem is multi-objective and NP-Hard, the heuristic algorithm NSGA-II is proposed for Pareto solutions and then the estimation of the parameters of the algorithm is described using the design of experiments. According to the review of the previous research, there are a few pieces of research in the blood supply chain in the field of design queue models and there were few works that tried to use these concepts for designing the blood supply chain networks. Also, in former research, the uncertainty in the number of donors, and also the importance of blood donors has not been considered.FindingsA novel mathematical model guided by the theory of linear programming has been proposed that can help health-care administrators in optimizing the blood supply chain networks.Originality/valueBy building upon solid literature and theory, the current study proposes a novel model for improving the supply chain of blood.
Highlights
Optimizing theThe management of blood product consumption considers as one of the most complex issues blood supply in health-care systems due to some issues such as limitation of blood resources, perishability, special preservation conditions of blood products, and high wastage and shortage costs of chain network blood products (Ramezanian and Behboodi, 2017)
In the present study and at all levels, blood products have a specific life cycle and bypassing their time, they will be considered as waste products
In this research and at all levels, blood products have a specific life cycle, and bypassing their time, they will be considered as waste products
Summary
The management of blood product consumption considers as one of the most complex issues blood supply in health-care systems due to some issues such as limitation of blood resources, perishability, special preservation conditions of blood products, and high wastage and shortage costs of chain network blood products (Ramezanian and Behboodi, 2017). Many patients need blood transfusions every day for various reasons (Ramezanian and Behboodi, 2017) Some people, such as dialysis patients and long-term patients, need blood products to survive permanently, and some other patients need blood products due to surgical resection. In cases such as open surgery or neonatal surgery, according to some medical requirements, only fresh blood products should be used (Ghasemi, 2019)
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