IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v243y2015i1p271-280.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The 2Bin system for controlling medical supplies at point-of-use

Author

Listed:
  • Rosales, Claudia R.
  • Magazine, Michael
  • Rao, Uday

Abstract

The increase in cost of supplies and services is outpacing the increase in revenues at many hospitals. To address this cost increase hospitals are seeking more efficient ways to store and manage vast inventories of medical supplies. A parsimonious and efficient inventory system which we call 2Bin is becoming increasingly popular in North American hospitals. Under the 2Bin system inventory is stored in two equal-sized bins. 2Bin systems are reviewed periodically and empty bins are replenished. In recent years the adoption of RFID technology for 2Bin systems is allowing continuous-time tracking of empty bins, increasing inventory visibility. In this paper we model the 2Bin inventory system under periodic and continuous review. For periodic review we show that the long-run average cost per unit time is quasi-convex, enabling a simple search for the optimal review cycle. For continuous review, we present a semi-Markov decision model, characterize the optimal replenishment policy, and provide a solution approach to obtain the long-run average cost per unit time. Using data obtained from hospitals currently using RFID-enabled 2Bin systems, we estimate the economic benefits of using the best periodic review length (i.e., parameter optimization), and of using a continuous review inventory policy (i.e., policy improvement). We characterize system conditions such as the number of medical supplies used, replenishment costs, stock-out costs, etc. that favor each option, and provide insights to hospital management on system design considerations that favor the use of periodic or continuous review.

Suggested Citation

  • Rosales, Claudia R. & Magazine, Michael & Rao, Uday, 2015. "The 2Bin system for controlling medical supplies at point-of-use," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 243(1), pages 271-280.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:243:y:2015:i:1:p:271-280
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2014.10.041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221714008637
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2014.10.041?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Khouja, Moutaz & Goyal, Suresh, 2008. "A review of the joint replenishment problem literature: 1989-2005," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 186(1), pages 1-16, April.
    2. M Bijvank & I F A Vis, 2012. "Inventory control for point-of-use locations in hospitals," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 63(4), pages 497-510, April.
    3. Sari, Kazim, 2010. "Exploring the impacts of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology on supply chain performance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(1), pages 174-183, November.
    4. Joseph L. Balintfy, 1964. "On a Basic Class of Multi-Item Inventory Problems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(2), pages 287-297, January.
    5. Zhou, Wei, 2009. "RFID and item-level information visibility," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 198(1), pages 252-258, October.
    6. Derek R. Atkins & Paul O. Iyogun, 1988. "Periodic Versus "Can-Order" Policies for Coordinated Multi-Item Inventory Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(6), pages 791-796, June.
    7. S. Viswanathan, 1997. "Note. Periodic Review (s, S) Policies for Joint Replenishment Inventory Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(10), pages 1447-1454, October.
    8. Uday S. Rao, 2003. "Properties of the Periodic Review (R, T) Inventory Control Policy for Stationary, Stochastic Demand," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 5(1), pages 37-53, February.
    9. Sarac, Aysegul & Absi, Nabil & Dauzère-Pérès, Stéphane, 2010. "A literature review on the impact of RFID technologies on supply chain management," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 77-95, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moons, Karen & Waeyenbergh, Geert & Pintelon, Liliane, 2019. "Measuring the logistics performance of internal hospital supply chains – A literature study," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 205-217.
    2. Kanet, J.J. & Wells, C.E., 2019. "Setting bin quantities for 2-Bin Kanban systems (version 3)," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 142-149.
    3. Ying Yang & Huijing Wu & Caixia Yan, 2021. "Medical consumable usage control based on Canopy_K-means clustering and WARM," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 722-739, November.
    4. Esha Saha & Pradip Kumar Ray, 2019. "Modelling and analysis of healthcare inventory management systems," OPSEARCH, Springer;Operational Research Society of India, vol. 56(4), pages 1179-1198, December.
    5. Volland, Jonas & Fügener, Andreas & Schoenfelder, Jan & Brunner, Jens O., 2017. "Material logistics in hospitals: A literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 82-101.
    6. Ying Yang & Huijing Wu & Caixia Yan, 0. "Medical consumable usage control based on Canopy_K-means clustering and WARM," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-18.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kouki, Chaaben & Babai, M. Zied & Jemai, Zied & Minner, Stefan, 2016. "A coordinated multi-item inventory system for perishables with random lifetime," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(PA), pages 226-237.
    2. Padilla Tinoco, Silvia Valeria & Creemers, Stefan & Boute, Robert N., 2017. "Collaborative shipping under different cost-sharing agreements," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(3), pages 827-837.
    3. Larsen, Christian, 2009. "The Q(s,S) control policy for the joint replenishment problem extended to the case of correlation among item-demands," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 292-297, March.
    4. Qinan Wang & Sven Axsäter, 2013. "Fixed‐interval joint‐replenishment policies for distribution systems with multiple retailers and stochastic demand," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(8), pages 637-651, December.
    5. Nielsen, Christina & Larsen, Christian, 2005. "An analytical study of the Q(s,S) policy applied to the joint replenishment problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 163(3), pages 721-732, June.
    6. Kiesmüller, G.P., 2009. "A multi-item periodic replenishment policy with full truckloads," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 275-281, March.
    7. Kiesmüller, G.P., 2010. "Multi-item inventory control with full truckloads: A comparison of aggregate and individual order triggering," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 54-62, January.
    8. Ahmed Musa & Al-Amin Abba Dabo, 2016. "A Review of RFID in Supply Chain Management: 2000–2015," Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Springer;Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, vol. 17(2), pages 189-228, June.
    9. Zhou, Wei & Piramuthu, Selwyn, 2012. "Manufacturing with item-level RFID information: From macro to micro quality control," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 929-938.
    10. Zhang, Ren-qian & Kaku, Ikou & Xiao, Yi-yong, 2011. "Deterministic EOQ with partial backordering and correlated demand caused by cross-selling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(3), pages 537-551, May.
    11. Bo Dai & Fenfen Li, 2021. "Joint Inventory Replenishment Planning of an E-Commerce Distribution System with Distribution Centers at Producers’ Locations," Logistics, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-14, July.
    12. Lee, Jongkuk & Palekar, Udatta S. & Qualls, William, 2011. "Supply chain efficiency and security: Coordination for collaborative investment in technology," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(3), pages 568-578, May.
    13. De Moor, Bram J. & Creemers, Stefan & Boute, Robert N., 2023. "Breaking truck dominance in supply chains: Proactive freight consolidation and modal split transport," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
    14. Suman Kalyan Sardar & Biswajit Sarkar, 2020. "How Does Advanced Technology Solve Unreliability Under Supply Chain Management Using Game Policy?," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-16, July.
    15. Zhong, Ray Y. & Huang, George Q. & Lan, Shulin & Dai, Q.Y. & Chen, Xu & Zhang, T., 2015. "A big data approach for logistics trajectory discovery from RFID-enabled production data," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 260-272.
    16. Dai, Bo & Chen, Haoxun & Li, Yuan & Zhang, Yidong & Wang, Xiaoqing & Deng, Yuming, 2023. "An alternating direction method of multipliers for optimizing (s, S) policies in a distribution system with joint replenishment volume constraints," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    17. Lee, Loo Hay & Chew, Ek Peng, 2005. "A dynamic joint replenishment policy with auto-correlated demand," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(3), pages 729-747, September.
    18. S G Johansen & P Melchiors, 2003. "Can-order policy for the periodic-review joint replenishment problem," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 54(3), pages 283-290, March.
    19. Creemers, Stefan & Boute, Robert, 2022. "The joint replenishment problem: Optimal policy and exact evaluation method," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(3), pages 1175-1188.
    20. Dettenbach, Marcus & Thonemann, Ulrich W., 2015. "The value of real time yield information in multi-stage inventory systems – Exact and heuristic approaches," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 72-83.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:243:y:2015:i:1:p:271-280. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.