Inventory and order management for healthcare commodities during a pandemic

Chelsea Greene (), Zelda B. Zabinsky, David Sarley and Laila Akhlaghi
Additional contact information
Chelsea Greene: University of Washington
Zelda B. Zabinsky: University of Washington
David Sarley: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Laila Akhlaghi: John Snow, Inc.

Annals of Operations Research, 2024, vol. 337, issue 1, No 5, 105-133

Abstract: Abstract During the coronavirus pandemic, demand surges and supply chain disruptions have resulted in healthcare commodity shortages. Limitations in modeling approaches forced decision makers to make quick decisions with little information. This paper presents a practical optimization model to guide ordering plans for a set of healthcare commodities and populations, such as masks for health care providers, during a pandemic. We collaborated with several organizations managing inventory for healthcare commodities to identify the key challenges, decisions, and objectives they face during a pandemic. The proposed model differs from other inventory and order management models in that the optimization balances the impact of commodity substitutions with delays in meeting demand forecasts. To balance these impacts, we introduce a Healthcare Commodity Metric that quantifies the relative consequences of delay and substitutions for multiple commodities and populations that vary in criticality. To the best of our knowledge, our model is the first to balance the consequences of delays and substitutions for multiple healthcare commodities during a pandemic. The model supports an agile and collaborative decision-making process needed in a constantly changing environment. The model is agile in that it can be adapted quickly to changes in demand, supply capacities, supply costs, and lead times. The model supports collaborative decision making by estimating the impacts of operational (e.g., ordering) and strategic (e.g., budget) decisions. We present an example use case to illustrate how the model balances delay and substitution and can be used to support agile and collaborative decision making.

Keywords: Healthcare commodities; Inventory and order management; Item criticality; Demand substitution; Supply chain disruption; Mathematical optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-024-05870-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:annopr:v:337:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s10479-024-05870-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-024-05870-4

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().