Title: A robust optimisation model for sustainable blood supply chain network design under uncertainty

Authors: Zahra Mohammadian-Behbahani; Armin Jabbarzadeh; Mir Saman Pishvaee

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran; Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Blood is a perishable, scarce and lifesaving product. While the demand for blood products has been increased over the past few decades, there has been no specified artificial alternative for this critical product yet. In this context, it is of paramount importance to design efficient, agile and effective blood supply chain networks. This paper presents a multi-objective stochastic programming model for blood supply chain network design by considering the following objectives: minimising total cost, minimising delivery time and maximising two important social measures including the indicator of consumer's health and the rate of regular blood donors. A robust optimisation approach is employed to incorporate different sources of uncertainties in demand and supply parameters. To investigate the performance and utility of the proposed formulation, the model is implemented using real data of blood transfusion network of Tehran.

Keywords: blood supply chain; network design; sustainability; uncertainty; ?-constraint method.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2019.099190

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2019 Vol.31 No.4, pp.475 - 494

Received: 24 Nov 2016
Accepted: 23 Jul 2017

Published online: 23 Apr 2019 *

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