Blood Platelet Production: Optimization by Dynamic Programming and Simulation

Blood platelets are precious, as voluntarily supplied by donors, and highly perishable, with limited lifetimes of 5¿7 days. Demand is highly variable and uncertain. A practical production and inventory rule is strived for that minimizes shortages and spill. The demand and production are periodic, as varying over the seven days of the week. Demand for `young¿ platelets (oncology and hematology) and demand for platelets of `any¿ age up to the maximal shelf life (traumatology and general surgery) are distinguished. A combined Markov dynamic programming (MDP) and simulation approach is presented and applied to a real life case of a Dutch blood bank. By down-sizing the dimension and applying this combined approach it is shown that order-up-to type replenishment rules that perform quite well can be found. Particularly, a double-level order-up-to rule, so-called 2D rule, is derived, with one level corresponding to `young¿ platelets and one to the total inventory. This rule is easy to implement and is shown to be `nearly optimal¿. This approach and the double order-up-to rule seem to be new. The results are most suitable for sensitivity analyses such as with respect to shortages and production costs for blood platelet inventory management.