A combined age-and-stock-based policy for ordering blood units in hospital blood banks

Abstract

This paper analyses the performance of an ordering policy for hospital blood banks (HBBs) that takes into account the information regarding the on-hand stock along with the remaining life of blood products. The blood items are assumed to start aging as soon as they have been collected. We develop a simulation model to show that the combined age-and-stock-based policy would outperform some of the popular periodic reviews and continuous review policies in controlling total costs by about 5% on an average basis. Our results show that the suggested policy will reduce the total operational cost of managing platelets, which have a very short shelf life, by about 27% at a real-life HBB. The policy will also lead to about 7% reduction in the total cost of the negative blood groups, which are characterized by extremely erratic demand patterns. The implementation of the ordering policy will help HBBs to reduce their operational costs while ensuring a minimum desirable level of the availability of critical blood products.