Measuring the Importance of Operational Criteria for Blood Inventory Management

Blood inventory management is one of the main challenges in Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization. In order to manage blood inventory, identification of affecting factors is required. Based on an extensive literature review, three classes of criteria, type of blood, blood reception and blood retention are identified. Each criteria is then subdivided in to a number of sub-criteria. By prioritizing all the criteria and sub-criteria, the importance of each one to efficient blood inventory management is evaluated. The main purpose of this research is to identify criteria and sub-criteria of blood inventory management, evaluation, measuring, and weighting those factors. In this research, data were collected; based on view points of experts and using questionnaire related to multi-criteria decision making technique. Results indicate that type of blood with the weight of 0.441 is the strongest, while blood reception with a weight of 0.238 is the weakest criteria. There are many different criteria affecting the effective blood management. Therefore, it is necessary for the blood transfusion center managers to focus on the criteria, based on their priorities, in a way that they would reach an optimal blood management performance.