Análise de uma cadeia de suprimento de sangue no Brasil utilizando simulação a eventos discretos

Abstract

The blood supply chain has similar characteristics to the business supply chain. However, the social impact is even greater, since inefficient management can lead to death or delay in some surgery, for example. In addition, there is a concern that in the coming decades, due to the prospect of future blood shortages, there will be a considerable increase in elderly people who will not be accompanied in the same proportion by donors. In this way, making a blood supply network more efficient is extremely important to improve service to the population. However, there are few researches involving blood supply chains in Brazil, mainly with the use of operational research. Therefore, this work seeks to evaluate the supply network in the state of Santa Catarina, based on data provided by the Blood Center of Santa Catarina (HEMOSC). Discrete event simulation will be used to represent the current system and evaluate other scenarios. The current scenario shows the behavior of the blood network representing the system from blood collection to transfusion. The increase in demand and centralization of production were evaluated as alternative scenarios to analyze and identify more efficient configurations of the supply network. The results suggest that in the scenarios of increased demand, there should be an increase in the rupture of the blood network and present the blood centers that will be more impacted due to their geographic locations. In addition, the results showed a reduction in blood bag losses due to validity throughout the blood network, a behavior of the stock occupancy rates similar to the projections of donor population increases, and an exponential non-attendance of relocated bags behavior. On the other hand, the production centralization scenarios showed great potential for cost reduction in the network, although analyzes of the logistical costs involved are still necessary for decision making.