Location and Multi-Compartment Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem for Blood Banking System

Abstract

Blood banking is important for the healthcare system and blood products are vital needed for medical treatment, surgeries, and organ transplants. Delivery time becomes vital when a hospital needs a blood product emergently. Therefore, delivering blood products in the safest and fastest way is the main responsibility of blood banks. In this study, we aim to minimize total delivery times between depots and demand points over a time period. We propose a two-stage mathematical model to determine both location and vehicle delivery routes. This problem is defined as Location and Routing problem for blood bank operations. This study also investigates the effect of distributing blood products among multi-compartment along with routing decisions. The proposed models are tested on a real-world case data in order to demonstrate their effectiveness in producing optimal solutions. By the results the approach can minimize both delivery time and total cost. Furthermore, a computer program with a graphical user interface is developed to implement the proposed approach for different data sets.