An integrated blood supply chain network design during a pandemic

Abstract

The emergency supply of blood in the wake of pandemic has proved challenging. We develop in this paper a bi-objective blood supply chain (BSC) model that uses two-stage stochastic optimisation to optimise the expected cost of the supply chain and the average blood delivery time when a pandemic occurs. The model considers not only vertically and horizontally integrated mechanisms of the BSC network, but also several specific assumptions about the pandemic, such as the risk of disruption in donor groups, and the restriction of ‘no cross blood donation’. To alleviate blood shortages in the context of a pandemic, we further extended our model, which allows for blood type substitution according to ABO/Rh(d)-compatibility. To efficiently solve the model and generate the Pareto front, we develop a hybrid solution algorithm to solve the proposed model, including the ε-constraint method to transform the bi-objective model into a single-objective model, the subgradient method for finding a lower bound, and two heuristic methods for finding an upper bound. Moreover, we perform extensive numerical studies to assess the performance of the proposed approach. We also discuss the impacts of the key parameters, integration mechanisms, and planning blood type substitution on the BSC. Finally, we also apply the proposed model to a real case study of the BSC in Chongqing, China.

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