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Delivery strategies for blood products supplies

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Abstract

We introduce a problem faced by the blood bank of the Austrian Red Cross for Eastern Austria: how to cost-effectively organize the delivery of blood products to Austrian hospitals? We investigate the potential value of switching from the current vendee-managed inventory set up to a vendor-managed inventory system. We present solution approaches based on integer programming and variable neighborhood search and evaluate their performance.

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Correspondence to Karl F. Doerner.

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Hemmelmayr, V., Doerner, K.F., Hartl, R.F. et al. Delivery strategies for blood products supplies. OR Spectrum 31, 707–725 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-008-0134-7

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