Challenge and opportunity research in blood supply chain management: a literature review

Abstract

An interconnected series of the blood management is called blood supply chain management (BSCM). The stages of BSCM consisted of blood collecting, production, inventory, and distribution. The main challenges in BSCM are related to shortage, outdate, and supply chain cost which needed to minimize. Naturally, problems in BSCM are complex, it is not an easy task to find the solution. This complexity brought by several factors as follows: its inflicted risk, the uncertainty of supply and demand, blood nature as perishable commodity, demand uniqueness, and cost occurred. This research purposes was to review of various research related to BSCM and highlight opportunities to develop further research in blood supply chain (BSC). The result of this research is a suggestion on various possible future research to be explored in BSC, for example, developing an adaptive inventory model to support blood supply chain management that could be responsive toward demand fluctuation and developing collecting strategy to minimize shortage, outdate and incurred cost in supply chain level.