Blood collection management: Methodology and application

Blood supply chains play a key role in the healthcare systems. Any improvement in the management of these chains will have a direct impact on the supply of blood as a life-saving product. This paper presents a mixed integer linear programming model to make strategic as well as tactical decisions in a blood collection system over a multi-period planning horizon. A robust possibilistic programming approach is applied to cope with the inherent epistemic uncertainty of the model's parameters. Several numerical examples are solved to demonstrate the robustness of solutions and to provide managerial insights. Finally, the applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated using a real case study in Iran.