Title: Critical-to-life classification for managing inventory in a healthcare supply chain

Authors: Lina Al-Qatawneh; Khalid Hafeez

Addresses: Industrial Engineering Department, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan ' The Claude Littner Business School, University of West London, London, UK

Abstract: This paper presents a multi-criterion critical-to-life classification technique to supplement the cost and usage measures that are normally employed in hospital inventory management. A system dynamics model was developed employing (R, s, S) inventory control approach for a US private sector healthcare supply chain. Extensive simulation analyses were conducted to study the stock behaviour for low, medium and high usage critical-to-life items to maintain a range of service levels. The (R, s, S) design parameters were optimised according to the variability of item usage, the associated inventory level and supply lead-time. Our findings suggest that the proposed inventory classification technique allows for assigning a particular service level to each critical-to-life item to ensure its availability while minimising the cost and stock-out situations. The proposed simulation tool incorporating critical-to-life inventory classification facilitates hospital logistics managers to devise efficient inventory control strategies based on critical-to-life service level index.

Keywords: healthcare logistics; system dynamics; hospital inventory management; ABC classification; critical-to-life medical items; (R, s, S) inventory control; optimisation; simulation; healthcare supply chains; supply chain management; SCM; USA; United States; item usage; inventory levels; supply lead times; inventory classification; service levels.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIE.2015.073491

International Journal of Intelligent Enterprise, 2015 Vol.3 No.1, pp.54 - 78

Received: 07 May 2015
Accepted: 26 May 2015
Published online: 09 Dec 2015 *

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