Browsing by Author "Yates, Nicola"

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    Approaches to assessing and minimizing blood wastage in the hospital and blood supply chain
    (Wiley, 2017-01-27) Yates, Nicola; Wilding, Richard D.
    Despite the scale of blood usage worldwide, blood remains a scarce and precious resource. As with any perishable product, careful management of inventories to minimize wastage is crucial. However, due to the nature of the supply of blood, wastage is not only an economic issue as every unit wasted, squanders the time and effort of the human donor. Blood inventory management is therefore a trade-off, ensuring 100% availability of all blood products at all times whilst minimizing wastage. Hospitals are at the front line of blood use and are the location where much blood is wasted. Inventory management practices in hospital transfusion laboratories are critical. Much of the extant literature in this area posits that good management of hospital blood inventories is due to sophisticated inventory models and algorithms. However, recent research has found that good management practices are much more important. The drivers for low wastage and good inventory management practice can be described using six key themes. Blood supply chain management is much more than managing wastage in hospitals. Proper management of the supply chain as a whole can lead to significant reductions in blood wastage. Recent research has found that methods commonly used in commercial supply chain management can lead to efficiencies in the blood supply chain context. An example of this is stock sharing or lateral transhipment of blood units close to expiry between hospitals, reducing wastage across the supply chain.
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    Improving blood safety and availability: a collective mindfulness perspective in the supply chain
    (Emerald, 2021-10-12) Lusiantoro, Luluk; Yates, Nicola
    Purpose – Maintaining a safe and available supply of blood requires a mindfully coordinated supply chain (SC) and is fundamental to the effective operation of health systems across the world. This study investigates how blood supply chain (BSC) actors demonstrate collective mindfulness (CM) principles in their operations and how these demonstrations lead to improvements in blood safety and availability (BSA) in different operational contexts. Design/methodology/approach – Six case studies drawn from two contrasting BSCs, the UK and Indonesia, which differ in structure and regulation are investigated in this research. Qualitative data are collected and analysed using template analysis. Findings – The cases reveal how the CM principles are demonstrated in the supply chain context in a range of operational conditions and their impact on BSA. The BSC actors in the more centralised and tightly regulated cases display more behaviours consistent with more of the CM principles over a greater range of operational conditions compared to those in the more decentralised and loosely regulated cases. As such, more improvements in BSA are found in the former compared to the latter cases. Originality/value – This paper is considered the first to investigate the demonstration of CM principles at the SC as opposed to the single organisational level. It proposes an alternative approach to understanding and evaluating reliability performance using behavioural rather than statistical principles.
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    A joint network design and mulit-echelon inventory optimisation approach for supply chain segmentation
    (Elsevier, 2017-09-07) Fichtinger, Johannes; Chan, Wan-Chuan; Yates, Nicola
    Segmenting large supply chains into lean and agile segments has become a powerful strategy allowing companies to manage different market demands effectively. A current stream of research into supply chain segmentation proposes demand volume and variability as the key segmentation criteria. This literature adequately justifies these criteria and analyses the benefits of segmentation. However, current work fails to provide approaches for allocating products to segments which go beyond simple rules of thumb, such as 80-20 Pareto rules. We propose a joint network and safety stock optimisation model which optimally allocates Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) to segments. We use this model, populated both with synthetic data and data from a real case study and demonstrate that this approach significantly improves cost when compared to using simple rules of thumb alone.
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    Lateral Transshipments: An Institutional Theory Perspective
    (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013-10-04T00:00:00Z) Stanger, S. H. W.; Wilding, Richard D.; Hartmann, E.; Yates, Nicola; Cotton, S.
    Purpose: Are lateral transshipments an effective instrument to ensure the safe and efficient supply of blood? This paper will use the lens of institutional theory to determine how the blood supply chain can benefit from lateral transshipments and what requirements are necessary for their implementation.  Design/methodology/approach: The research design comprises two stages. Firstly, 16 case studies clustered into 2 case groups were conducted with transfusion laboratories in UK hospitals resulting in the derivation of 8 key themes which were tested using a follow up survey.  Findings: The blood supply chain acts under the influence of significant institutional pressures. Coercive pressures result from regulations enforced to ensure the safe supply of blood, normative pressures are imposed by society, demanding wastage is minimized and mimetic pressure from other hospitals fosters efficient supply chain operation. Lateral transshipments offer a powerful organizational tool to allow the blood supply chain to conform to these pressures.  Research limitations/implications: This paper offers a novel institutional perspective on a complex supply chain issue where additional external pressures are seen to complicate the context. Due to the special characteristics of the blood supply chain, generalization of the findings to other industries must be done with care.  Practical implications (if applicable): The paper confirms the benefits of lateral transshipments in a perishable product context. Special requirements for the blood supply chain / health care services are identified.  Originality/value: The key contributions of this paper are five propositions which offer an institutional theory perspective on the application of lateral transshipment relationships in the blood supply chain.
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    A refined framework of information sharing in perishable product supply chains
    (Emerald, 2018-01-02) Lusiantoro, Luluk; Yates, Nicola; Mena Madrazo, Carlos; Varga, Liz
    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between information sharing and performance of perishable product supply chains (PPSC). Building on transaction cost economics (TCE), organisational information processing theory (OIPT), and contingency theory (CT), this study proposes a theoretical framework to guide future research into information sharing in perishable product supply chains (IS-PPSC). Design/methodology/approach Using the systematic literature review methodology, 48 peer-reviewed articles are carefully selected, mapped, and assessed. Template analysis is performed to unravel the relationship mechanisms between information sharing and PPSC performance. Findings The authors find that the relationship between information sharing and PPSC performance is currently unclear, and there is inconsistency in the positioning of information sharing among constructs and variables in the IS-PPSC literature. This implies a requirement to refine the relationship between information sharing and PPSC performance. The review also revealed that the role of perishable product characteristics has largely been ignored in existing research. Originality/value This study applies relevant multiple theoretical perspectives to overcome the ambiguity of the IS-PPSC literature and contributes nine propositions to guide future research. Accordingly, this study contributes to the refined roles of relationship uncertainty, environmental uncertainty, information sharing capabilities, and perishable product characteristics in shaping the relationship between information sharing and PPSC performance.