A Periodic Blood Inventory Model with Crossmatched Blood and Two Demand Classes

摘要

Blood inventory is a difficult-to-manage, perishable, and critical product needed for transfusions in healthcare facilities. The shortage of product results in high expedited order costs or loss of life. Overstocking can result in high costs and risk of product expiration. Crossmatching is the process by which blood can be tested for compatibility prior to a transfusion. This means that a portion of a unit can be reserved for crossmatching and that unused units can be returned to inventory after the crossmatch test. Thus we consider a periodic review blood inventory model with crossmatching and two priority demand classes, emergency and regular patients. It is assumed that the demand for product is random but follows a known distribution. Emergency patients are allocated units without crossmatch testing and are given priority. The optimal policy deals with the orders for blood that will expire within a fixed number of periods, to be placed in each period to minimize total expected costs. The costs include holding, ordering, outdate, and shortage. We formulate the problem as a finite horizon dynamic program and obtain the optimal policy and conduct a sensitivity analysis on parameters of interest.