Optimization Of Blood Supply Chain With Different Age Structure In Unreliable Supply Scenario

Blood is an irreplaceable key resource in the medical and health system.It is characterized by unique source,short shelf life,and extremely high shortage cost.It is critical to protect the blood supply and reduce expired waste,in order to improve the quality of medical and health system services.Due to the extremely high expiration blood rate,it is extremely important to strengthen the management of blood operations.The uniqueness of the blood source determines the high degree of unreliability of the blood supply,which makes it more difficult to match blood supply and demand.However,few studies investigated the problem of the expiration of blood under the unreliable supply scenarios.Therefore,it is of great significance to refine the supply environment and study the optimization of the blood supply chain under the multi-age structure.Considering that the blood supply chain is a complex dynamic system with multi-periodic operation,multi-age structure and multi-participants,this paper constructs a blood supply chain consisting of a blood center and three hospitals and builds a corresponding mathematical model.In the replenishment policies of hospitals and blood centers,three replenishment policies models were studied: according to order replenishment policy,order-up-to level and OIR(Old Inventory Ratio)replenishment policies.For distribution in blood centers,in terms of tactics,two allocation rules were considered,batch-size allocation rule and proportional allocation rule.In the supply chain control strategy,a centralized control strategy and a decentralized control strategy were constructed on the premise of meeting certain service levels.For operation rules,FIFO(First in First Out)outbound strategy model,inventory update model,were considered etc.Then,based on the mathematical model we constructed,a simulation optimization framework was designed using genetic algorithms.Taking platelets as an example,the blood supply chain was simulated and solved for 52 weeks(one natural year).A total of 48 combinations were tested to compare supply chain operation performance included 4 supply scenarios,3 replenishment policies,2 distribution rules,and 2 control strategies.Using simulation optimization results,the age structure,order quantity and actual demand difference of supply chain entities are discussed,and some management suggestions are proposed.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The supply environment will affect the operational performance of the blood supply chain,and it will also affect the hospital's expectation of actual demand.In the supply-reliable scenario,the blood supply chain can always achieve the lowest system expiration rate.When the supply is unreliable,the system's overdue rate increases as the capacity increases.(2)The replenishment policy under the complete information environment can greatly improve the operational efficiency of the blood supply chain.For the replenishment policy under incomplete information,consider the age of the warehouse for additional supply when the supply is reliable or the production capacity is weak.Restocking is more applicable.(3)Under different supply scenarios and replenishment policies,different allocation rules should be used to improve supply chain performance.(4)The use of centralized control can greatly reduce the system's overdue rate and optimize the blood supply chain operations.Meanwhile,the improvement of control strategies is affected by the supply environment.