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A multi-product multi-period stochastic model for a blood supply chain considering blood substitution and demand uncertainty

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Abstract

This paper presents a multi-product multi-period stochastic program for an integrated blood supply chain that considers red blood cells and platelets while accounting for multi-product interactions, demand uncertainty, blood age information, blood type substitution, and three types of patients. The aim is to minimize the total cost incurred during the collection, production, inventory, and distribution echelons under centralized control. The supply chains for red blood cells and platelets intertwine at the collection and production echelons as collected whole blood can be separated into red blood cells and platelets at the same time. By adapting to a real-world blood supply chain with one blood center, three collection facilities, and five hospitals, we found a cost advantage of the multi-product model over an uncoordinated model where the red blood cell and platelet supply chains are considered separately. Further sensitivity analyses indicated that the cost savings of the multi-product model mainly come from variations in the number of whole blood donors. These findings suggest that healthcare managers are able to see tremendous improvement in cost efficiency by considering red blood cell and platelet supply chains as a whole, especially with more whole blood donations and a higher percentage of whole blood derived platelets pooled for transfusion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Maritime Economics and Management, Dalian Maritime University, Management Building B, 1 Linghai Road, Dalian, 116026, China

    Yuan Xu

  2. Department of Transportation, Logistics and Finance, College of Business, North Dakota State University, NDSU Department 2420, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND, 58108, USA

    Joseph Szmerekovsky

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  1. Yuan Xu
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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Table 12 Average daily cost for different numbers of demand scenarios with a 60-day planning horizon for ten group of demand datasets
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Table 13 Average daily cost for different lengths of the planning horizon with 20 demand scenarios for ten group of demand datasets
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Xu, Y., Szmerekovsky, J. A multi-product multi-period stochastic model for a blood supply chain considering blood substitution and demand uncertainty. Health Care Manag Sci 25, 441–459 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-022-09593-5

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