PRESENTING A THREE-LEVEL LOCATION-INVENTORY MODEL FOR BLOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

Blood supply chain management is one of the important elds in the health care system. The blood supply chain consists of two components: donor blood collection and blood product supply. Human blood is a scarce resource. It is only produced by human beings and there are currently no other products or alternative chemical processes that can be used to generate blood. Blood supply chain is dierent from other supply chains because (a) supply of blood to donors and (b) one unit of blood being mechanically separated into ve components. In this study, a two-stage stochastic model for locationinventory of blood, which is part of the supply chain of perishable goods, was studied. The proposed blood supply chain has three levels of blood donors, mobile and xed centers and consumption centers. This study investigates platelet component which is a highly perishable component. The decision is made to determine the location of collection and distribute blood facility as well as the optimal inventory control policy such as identifying the optimal ordering for facing lack of blood, which is the main challenge based on perishable blood issuing policy which is FIFO. The objective function of the problem includes minimizing the cost of establishing blood donation centers, the cost of allocating donors to xed and mobile centers, the cost of transporting blood units along the supply chain network, the cost of ordering, inventory holding costs, and shortages and wasting blood in blood centers and hospitals. The eciency in reducing network costs lies in making correct decisions on locating, allocation, and inventory. We preferred a three-level network with donors and collection station and demand points and presented a programing model for locating station and allocation donor to them and identifying inventory policy. Given NP-hardness of the model, two metaheuristic GA and PSO algorithms were employed.