Blood banking is important
for the healthcare system and blood products are vital needed for medical
treatment, surgeries, and organ transplants. Delivery time becomes vital when a
hospital needs a blood product emergently. Therefore, delivering blood products
in the safest and fastest way is the main responsibility of blood banks. In
this study, we aim to minimize total delivery times between depots and demand
points over a time period. We propose
a two-stage mathematical model to determine both location and vehicle delivery routes.
This problem is defined as Location and Routing problem for blood bank operations.
This study also investigates the effect of distributing blood products among multi-compartment
along with routing decisions. The proposed models are tested on a real-world
case data in order to demonstrate their effectiveness in producing optimal
solutions. By the results the approach can minimize both delivery time and
total cost. Furthermore, a computer program with a graphical user interface is
developed to implement the proposed approach for different data sets.
Primary Language | English |
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Subjects | Engineering |
Journal Section | Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | March 1, 2018 |
Acceptance Date | July 19, 2018 |
Published in Issue | Year 2018 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 |