Simulation approach for workforce planning in a blood bank

Because of high demand for blood and blood components as well as insufficient blood donations to meet this high demand, it became necessary for the blood banks to be managed effectively. The research areas about blood banks are very broad; varying from increasing donations to obtaining the desired inventory levels and hence, researches for an effective management of blood banks have increased extensively in recent years. In this study, a simulation model was developed to minimize the total waiting time of donors and to balance the work load of staff at the blood bank of Hacettepe University Hospitals. By using the developed simulation model, alternative models were generated, compared and the most successful one, which satisfied the selected performance criteria, was chosen. By implementing the best alternative, waiting time of donors in the system was decreased by %70 and the work load of staff was balanced considerably. With this study, we emphasize the importance of blood banks which are the critical parts of the health care systems.