Blood component production scheduling using rule-based policies

Whole blood collected from healthy donors is typically separated into its main components for transfusion purposes, as each component fulfills a distinct physiological function. The production of blood components is carried out in specialized facilities, such as blood centers and hospitals, and represents a complex process due to the need to manage perishable resources under high-throughput operational constraints. Despite the relevance of advanced scheduling methodologies in this context, no dedicated approaches have been proposed in the blood supply chain literature to explicitly address the scheduling of separation activities. This study builds on our previous work, in which an ILP model was developed to generate optimal schedules for blood component production. Although the model was capable of producing high-quality and realistic schedules, it required significant computational time and resulted in non-intuitive schedules for the human operators that are involved in the production process. To address these limitations, we now propose a set of rule-based scheduling policies that enable the rapid generation of practical and interpretable solutions. The proposed policies account for both machine processing times and manual activities performed by human operators at the beginning and end of each operation. The objective is to achieve high-quality schedules with substantially reduced computational effort, while also providing actionable insights to support decision-making in the production process. We validated the proposed approach through a real-life case study at Niguarda Hospital in Milan, Italy. The results indicate that effective schedules can be obtained with substantially lower computational time compared to the ILP model. Moreover, the rule-based policies improve operational clarity and support operators in making more structured and informed decisions.