Title: Multi-criteria approach for platelet inventory management in hospitals

Authors: Suchithra Rajendran; A. Ravi Ravindran

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Department of Marketing, University of Missouri Columbia, MO, 65211, USA ' The Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Abstract: In this paper, a multiple criteria approach is proposed for platelet inventory management in hospitals. It has been reported that about 20% of the total platelet collected is outdated due to the short shelf life of platelets and demand uncertainty resulting in severe shortage. A multiple criteria mathematical programming (MCMP) model is developed to minimise three criteria: platelet wastage, shortage, and procurement and holding cost. The MCMP problem is solved using three MCMP techniques; preemptive goal programming (PGP), non-preemptive goal programming (NPGP) and weighted objective methods (WOM). A case study is discussed by applying the model to the daily demand data of platelets. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to analyze the impact of goal priorities in the PGP model and weights in the NPGP model and WOM. Based on the policies obtained under PGP, NPGP and WOM methods, the hospital management can decide the most suitable inventory policy for implementation. From the results, it is recommended that preemptive goal programming technique can be used if few goals are extremely important or given very high priority compared to others and is recommended to use weighted moving average or non-preemptive goal programming techniques if equal importance is given to all the goals.

Keywords: platelet inventory management; multiple criteria mathematical programming; preemptive goal programming; non-preemptive goal programming; weighted objective methods; sensitivity analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2020.106360

International Journal of Operational Research, 2020 Vol.38 No.1, pp.49 - 69

Received: 30 Aug 2016
Accepted: 11 Jun 2017
Published online: 03 Apr 2020 *

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