Blood shortage management with a reactive lateral transshipment approach in a local blood supply Chain

Abstract

The perishability of blood components and uncertainty in both donation and demand scale are two important reason that contributing to blood shortage. According to the WHO’s global statistics, 107 out of 180 countries struggle with an insufficient amount of blood units to meet currently existing demand for blood products. This paper proposes a 2-stage location-allocation blood supply chain network which aims to optimize blood inventory level by minimizing the total related costs. Various ordering policies, lateral transshipment between hospitals, emergency orders from blood centers, limited capacity for each centers, and blood aging process have been considered in the form of constraints. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has been considered as the case study focus for this research, and all the further necessary actions and recommendations have been taken based on the case study’s results.