Development of Multi - Objective, Multi- Period and Multi - Level Blood Supply Chain Planning Model

Lack of proper planning in blood supply may lead to irreparable damage of humans. The purpose of this study is to determine the optimal plan for donating, storing and sending blood to hospitals in each period to minimize the cost of set up and design a blood supply chain and its delivery time.

This study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical methodology. The model was solved with the uncertainty approach using the Epsilon constraint method in GAMZ software. To evaluate the accuracy of the model, a case study was conducted in 5 regions of Mazandaran province and by performing sensitivity analysis on key parameters, its effect on total cost and time of blood transfusion cycle was investigated.

The results of this study indicate the high accuracy of the model with the possibility of lateral delivery between hospitals. With a 5% reduction in transport time to 15%, a reduction in blood cycle time and a 25% reduction in this time has 26% reduction in the total blood transfusion process.

Lateral blood delivery between hospitals was used as a solution to increase the model's ability to respond hospital's demand and also reduce shortages costs and lack of blood in the blood supply chain. Also, the important parameters of the problem such as blood supply, demand, capacity of each center and related costs in the blood supply chain and the possibility of lateral delivery of blood products were analyzed to validate the model.