Identification of Disruptions and Associated Resilience Strategies in Blood Supply Chain Using a New Combined Approach

Supply chains face various disruptions from human-made to natural disasters preventing proper flow of materials and products. This problem is more important in the healthcare supply chains, especially the blood supply chains, in which human lives are at risk. Making the supply chains resilient, recently addressed by managers and researchers, can be a good way to tackle them. This study aimed to identify the most important disruptions and associated resilience strategies in the blood supply chain of Tehran, Iran, and prioritize the identified strategies based on the disruptions.

In the current study, important disruptions and associated appropriate resilience strategies were determined using previous studies and Delphi method. Then, the most important resilience strategies were identified and prioritized proposing the House of Quality and Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) as a novel hybrid approach.

A total of 9 disruptions and 16 resilience strategies were determined by reviewing previous studies and asking for expert opinions. The suggested hybrid model also contributed to determining the importance of each strategy in addressing disruptions and prioritizing them in the blood supply chain of Tehran.

Those strategies with high importance and low performance, such as flexibility or risk management culture, are of great importance and should be considered by managers and improved according to IPA. In addition, other strategies, such as social responsibility or redundancy, should be continued in the current way.