A location-inventory model of blood products (platelet) in the blood supply chain based on the EOQ ordering system

Despite the advancement of technology and the emergence of innovations in the field of healthcare, scientists have not yet been able to find a suitable alternative to human blood. As a result, inventory management of blood and blood products has always been a major concern of the medical community. Among blood products, platelet management is very important because of their specific usages and their rapid perishabilities. The main objective of this research is to present a platelet supply chain design for decreasing the number of shortages and wastages simultaneously.

In this study, a mixed nonlinear location-inventory model is presented by using inventory concepts in order to manage platelet inventory in blood centers and hospitals and locating collection facilities to reduce platelet supply chain costs. The proposed location-inventory model has approximately converted into mixed linear programming using the piecewise linearization method and then has been solved with the Gams software.

Using the proposed model, blood centers are able to meet a high percentage of hospital demands, which reduces the number of platelet shortage units and supply chain cost. Also, using inventory concepts and better hospital assignment to blood centers with FIFO policy, the restriction of wastage on the number of lost units in hospitals and blood centers will be removed.

Using the developed contribution and applying inventory control and economic order quantity (EOQ) relations, the platelet inventory in the blood centers can be managed in such a way that in each period the maximum demand of hospitals has been met and the shortage has been reduced. Also, due to the specific features of the blood, platelets would be kept in more proper conditions, which will reduce the wastes in hospitals. In addition, the number of blood donors can be improved by using mobile blood collection facilities.