Multiple objective planning for regional blood centers.

There is no substitute for human blood and the demand for blood to use in modern surgical procedures in increasing significantly faster than the population. Numerous management science reseachers have recognized the need to improve the management of the blood resource. This paper is the first effort directed towards annual planning of the operation of a regional blood system. One main point of the paper is that no matter how well inventory is controlled on a day to day basis, the blood administrator must have an annual plan to attain the goals of a blood service organization. The model formulated in this study can help a regional blood administrator determine the magnitude of the blood collection effort and the size of the regional blood inventory. The decision method developed is based on multiple objective techniques and is especially relevant to health car delivery problems. An example of the procedure is then applied to a large urban-rural blood region located in the eastern United States.