Developing an integrated blood supply chain network in crisis conditions considering the concentration of sites in facilities and blood types substitution

In the management of the blood supply chain network, the existence of a coherent and accurate program can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the network. This research presents an integrated mathematical model to minimize network costs and blood delivery time in crisis conditions. In the present model, to ensure timely and sufficient blood supply, especially in crisis conditions, the new approach concentration of blood collection, processing, and distribution sites in the facilities, emergency transportation, pollution, route traffic (delivery delay), blood type substitution, and supporter facilities were used. Moreover, other important decisions, including locating all permanent and temporary facilities at three blood collection, processing, and distribution sites, and blood shortage, were also applied in the model. The proposed model was solved for several problems using the Augmented epsilon-constraint method. The results showed that deploying advanced processing equipment in field hospitals, the concentration of sites in facilities, and blood type substitution have significantly improved network efficiency. Therefore, managers and decision-makers can use the proposed approaches to optimize the blood supply chain network to minimize network costs and blood delivery time.