Optimization of blood sample collection with timing and quality constraints

We focus on planning transportation operations within a blood sample supply chain, which comprises clinics and a laboratory. Specifically, the main goal of this study is to obtain the optimal number of vehicles to be deployed and the scheduling of the pickup process. First, we formulate a mixed‐integer programming (MIP) problem. Next, we develop a heuristic scheme composed of two heuristic algorithms and numerical search, and a new genetic algorithm. In an extensive numerical study, based on the data from a real‐life blood sample collection process, we illustrate the potential of the new heuristic scheme.