Title: Fuzzy bi-objective inventory-routing problem for blood products in a hospital network during disasters: two multi-objective meta-heuristic approaches

Authors: Mohammad Hajibabaie; Mohammad Mehdi Lotfi

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

Abstract: Post-disaster inventory-routing problem consisting of a blood products' supplier and a set of hospitals is investigated. With respect to the different scenarios of roads' availability, the goal of the proposed model is to establish a trade-off between the minimisation of total costs and total delivery time of blood products. Due to the criticality of platelets and red blood cells in disasters, only these two perishable items are addressed. The shortage and wastage costs are predicted based on the conformity measures of patient and donator. The demands are considered as a set of fuzzy numbers due to the lack of sufficient precise data. The model is solved exactly using ε-constraint; however, for large-sized problems, two meta-heuristics, i.e., NSGA-II and MOSA are developed. Comparing the results of NSGA-II and MOSA to those of ε-constraint confirms the efficiency of solution algorithms. Moreover, NSGA-II outperforms MOSA regarding the solution quality; but, MOSA needs fewer computational efforts.

Keywords: disaster; blood; inventory-routing problem; ε-constraint; NSGA-II; multi-objective simulated annealing; MOSA.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2021.115067

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2021 Vol.39 No.1, pp.22 - 51

Received: 02 Aug 2018
Accepted: 26 May 2019
Published online: 18 May 2021 *

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