On the Issuing Policies for Perishable Items such as Red Blood Cells and Platelets in Blood Service

Abstract

Red blood cells (RBCs) and platelets are examples of perishable items with a fixedshelf life. Recent studies show that transfusing fresh RBCs may lead to an improvement of patient outcomes. In addition, to better manage their inventory, hospitals prefer to receive fresh RBCs and platelets. Therefore, as well as minimizing outdates and shortages, reducing the average age of issue is a key performance criterion for blood banks. The issuing policy in a perishable inventory system has a substantial impact on the age of issue and outdate and shortage rates. Although several studies have compared the last in first out (LIFO) and the first in first out (FIFO) policies for perishable products, only a few studies have considered the situation of blood banks where replenishment is not controllable. In this study, we examine various issuing policies for a perishable inventory system with uncontrollable replenishment, and outline a modified FIFO policy. Our proposed modified FIFO policy partitions the inventory into two parts such that the first part holds the items with age less than a threshold. It then applies the FIFO policy in each part and the LIFO policy between the parts. We present two approximation techniques to estimate the average age of issue, the average time between successive outdates and the average time between successive shortages of the modified FIFO policy. Our analysis shows in several cases that where the objective function is a single economic function, or it is formulated as a multiobjective model, the modified FIFO policy outperforms the FIFO and LIFO policies.

A Mathematical Model for a Blood Supply Chain Network with the Robust Fuzzy Possibilistic Programming Approach: A Case Study at Namazi Hospital

“…Abdulwahab and Wahab [12] proposed a collection of methods used for vendor problems and linear programming in the blood bank inventory model and other methods of inventory. Abbasi and Hosseinifard [13] presented a model to evaluate the release of platelets and red blood cells in the blood supply service by using queuing theory. Pishvaee and Torabi [14] specified that traditional models can not apply the precision and logic of classical mathematical alone.…”

“…Constraint (12) ensures that two days of blood is not available in the stock. Constraint (13) specifies that no inventory is available at the beginning of the analysis period. Equation (14) shows the rate of hospital waste at the end of each course.…”

Heuristic-based allocation of supply constrained blood platelets in emerging economies

“…Later work, including Haijema et al (2005Haijema et al ( , 2007Haijema et al ( , 2009, stressed the short shelf-life of platelets, tried to capture orderup-to replenishment policies for inventory decisions, and aimed to minimize platelet wastage. Follow-up work include Zhou et al (2011), who developed a detailed platelet inventory management model with two different ordering policies (normal and expedited); Abbasi and Hosseinifard (2014), who proposed FIFO policies for assigning age differentiated stock to the demand streams; and finally Civelek et al (2015) introduced a protection ceiling while allocating platelet inventory for age differentiated demands. However, a predominant focus of the literature has been on classical inventory management approaches such as cost minimization Bertazzi et al (2005) rather than allocation of inventories.…”

“…Follow-up work include Zhou et al. ( 2011 ), who developed a detailed platelet inventory management model with two different ordering policies (normal and expedited); Abbasi and Hosseinifard ( 2014 ), who proposed FIFO policies for assigning age differentiated stock to the demand streams; and finally Civelek et al. ( 2015 ) introduced a protection ceiling while allocating platelet inventory for age differentiated demands.…”

Postdisaster Volatility of Blood Donations in an Unsteady Blood Supply Chain*

“…In order to address shortages and outdates of blood, coordination between hospitals and blood banks have gained special attention among researchers (Beliën & Forcé, ). This covers such ideas as allocation policies of a perishable product from a regional center to different locations in the region (Kendall, ; Federgruen, Prastacos, & Zipkin, ; Tetteh, ), discussing a redistribution system for near‐outdate RBCs to transport units that are about to outdate from a low‐usage hospital to a high‐usage hospital (Denesiuk, Richardson, Nahirniak, & Clarke, ), collections planning for regional blood centers to smooth seasonal variability of supply and demand for blood (Cumming, Kendall, Pegels, Seagle, & Shubsda, ), developing a blood inventory level forecast system to alert regional blood centers (Frankfurter, Kendall, & Pegels, ), investigating various issuing policies implemented in regional blood banks with uncontrollable replenishment (Abbasi & Hosseinifard, ), and finally papers dealing with transshipment and the issue of whether a centralized system outperforms a decentralized system (Dehghani & Abbasi, ; Hosseinifard & Abbasi, ).…”