Proactive transshipment in the blood supply chain: A stochastic programming approach

Maryam Dehghani, Babak Abbasi and Fabricio Oliveira

Omega, 2021, vol. 98, issue C

Abstract: The main objective when managing inventories in blood supply chains is to establish an efficient balance between the wastage and shortage of blood units. The uncertain demand and the perishable nature of blood units can result in over- or under-stocking and increase wastage and shortage costs. In this study, we analyze how a proactive transshipment policy can avoid future shortages in addition to mitigate wastage. We consider a network of hospitals with uncertain demand in which each hospital makes decisions on the quantity to order from a central blood bank and to transship to other hospitals in each review period. We formulate the problem as a two-stage stochastic programming model. To generate scenarios, the Quasi-Monte Carlo sampling approach is employed and the optimal number of scenarios is determined by conducting stability tests. We performed numerical experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed model and investigate the potential benefits of the outlined proactive transshipment. The developed model is used to compare the optimized policy with the current practice in some hospitals in Australia and with a no-transshipment policy. The numerical results indicate significant potential cost savings in comparison with the current policy in use and the no-transshipment policy.

Keywords: Blood supply chain; Inventory management; Lateral transshipment; Healthcare operations; Stochastic optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305048318308284
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jomega:v:98:y:2021:i:c:s0305048318308284

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2019.102112

Access Statistics for this article

Omega is currently edited by B. Lev

More articles in Omega from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().