A performance evaluation of some collaborative inventory management practices in the healthcare supply chain

The work presented in this paper intends to show the impact of collaborative partnerships between the hospitals on the improvement of the healthcare supply chains configurations. In particular, we present an approach that support the implementation of new alternatives for inventory management ranging from the inventory centralization to the emergency lateral transshipment practices within a group of nearby hospitals. This approach was developed around a simulation-based optimization model in order to assess the cost savings and the operational efficiency of these collaborative schemes. The flexibility of our model allows its application to supply chains with different topologies, atypical cost characteristics and various rules for inventory sharing.