USING DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION TO IMPROVE BLOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
Open Access
- Author:
- Raman, Arun
- Graduate Program:
- Industrial Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Engineering
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- None
- Committee Members:
- Soundar Rajan Tirupatikumara, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Soundar Rajan Tirupatikumara, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- AUTOMOD
Discrete Event Simulation
Blood Supply Chain - Abstract:
- Blood Supply chain is a very complicated and interesting problem as it’s a costly commodity and its wastage is undesirable. Blood is a perishable commodity i.e. has a fixed shelf life with a unique medical value. In case of blood all the components of blood are perishable with different lifetimes. This thesis deals with minimizing the shortage and wastage of blood units by maintaining an optimal amount of safety stock in the system. In this thesis, various critical parameters that affect the blood supply chain like Lead time, Safety stock level and Hold time were studied and an optimal safety stock level was obtained for each blood type. The safety stock level was focused on minimizing the blood shortage and wastage. This thesis also compares three issuing policies Last in First out, First in Last out and Expiry first. The performance of all three of the policies was evaluated based on the shortage and wastage of blood units. The thesis uses simulation as a tool to compares the effect of future increase in demand, Lead time and inter-arrival time. The system was observed for variation in safety stock level as the demand, lead time and inter-arrival time increased while other parameters were constant. From the simulation results it was found out that Expiry first always outperformed the FIFO and LIFO policies. It was noted that Lead Time has critical influence in system performance. The lesser the lead time the effect of other parameters in the system is significantly low. The increase in lead time makes the system more vulnerable when other parameters change.