غلامرضا جمالی

Background: Optimal blood inventory management, an issue that over the years have not been paid and has not been fully studied. Blood inventory management is one of the major challenge sources and a complex problem on Iran Blood Transfusion Organization. The research problem in this study is to determine optimal policy for management of blood inventory. Aim: The main objective of this study is to help the management to minimize wastage and shortage of blood. Methodology: In this study, to find an optimal blood inventory management, all eight blood groups and their daily delivery schedule, different requests have been considered. The emphasis of this research is also on trade-off between the two concepts, wastage rate and shortage rate. In this study, Bushehr blood transfusion organization used as an example. Using a questionnaire required data (such as the demand for the eight blood groups, inventories) were collected from Blood Transfusion Center as well as the database. To analyze the data, descriptive statistical methods and Lingo and MS Excel software has been used. Monte Carlo simulation is used to analyze different scenarios. Findings: Given these changes in the demand for blood from hospitals, the developed model was run and the effects of changes on the blood inventory was examined. Performance measures of blood inventory management system are including blood shortage, inventory at the end of time and donated blood. The impact of these measures on random changes in demand for blood depends on the percentage of blood donated such that by increasing the percentage of blood donations, the average inventory at the end of time and donated blood group of O is increased but the percentage of days blood shortage is reduced. Conclusions: Combining Mixed Integer Programming model and Monte Carlo simulation enable the management to predict system performance by simulating incoming requests for different blood groups. Then, with a link between simulation output and math