Optimal scheduling of logistical support for medical resources order and shipment in community health service centers
Abstract: This paper aims to
propose an optimal scheduling for medical resources order and shipment in
community health service centers (CHSCs).
Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents two logistical support
models for scheduling medical resources in CHSCs. The first model is a
deterministic planning model (DM), which systematically considers the demands
for various kinds of medical resources, the lead time of supplier, the storage
capacity and other constraints, as well as the integrated shipment planning in
the dimensions of time and space. The problem is a multi-commodities flow
problem and is formulated as a mixed 0-1 integer programming model. Considering
the demand for medical resources is always stochastic in practice, the second
model is constructed as a stochastic programming model (SM). A solution
procedure is developed to solve the proposed two models and a simulation-based
evaluation method is proposed to compare the performances of the proposed
models. Findings and
Findings: The main contributions of this paper includes the following two
aspects: (1) While most research on medical resources optimization studies a
static problem taking no consideration of the time evolution and especially the
dynamic demand for such resources, the proposed models in our paper integrate
time-space network technique, which can find the optimal scheduling of
logistical support for medical resources order and shipment in CHSCs
effectively. (2) The logistics plans in response to the deterministic demand
and the time-varying demand are constructed as 0-1 mixed integer programming
model and stochastic integer programming model, respectively. The optimal
solutions not only minimize the operation cost of the logistics system, but
also can improve the order and shipment operation in practice.
Originality/value: Currently, medical resources in CHSCs are purchased by
telephone or e-mail. The important parameters in decision making, i.e.
order/shipment frequency and order quantity, are manually determined by the
staff with experience according to the average demand in the past years/months.
The planned schedules may not be efficient, or may not be at all feasible to
satisfy all demands since a large portion of customer service requests in CHSCs
are uncertain and tine-varying. The proposed methods in this paper could be
effective ways in solving the problems in practice.
Author: Ming Liu
Journal Code: jptindustrigg150077
