Optimizing waste storage areas in health care centers
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Optimizing waste storage areas in health care centers Lorena Pradenas1 · Marco Fuentes1 · Víctor Parada2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Waste management is a critical issue for public health care services. Although operations management provides several tools for completing some stages of this process, the definition of a storage policy and the optimal packing of boxes with sharps waste in a storage area of a health care center are particular problems of high complexity. In this paper, a two-stage approach is proposed: The first stage considers the subproblem associated with the selection of the best policy. The second stage addresses the issue of waste packaging optimization. The multicriteria aspect of the first stage is addressed using the analytic hierarchy process, whereas the optimization of waste packaging is conducted using two heuristic methods: a sorting heuristic and the simulated annealing method. The best alternative method that is identified for the storage area considers the establishment of a specific room that is intended for the temporary storage of sharps waste. Furthermore, both heuristic methods provide suitable waste packaging options. The results suggest that the most appropriate method for each health care center must be selected by considering the order and sizes of the packing boxes, the required computational time and the required packaging efficiency. Keywords Health care operations management · Waste management · Health care center · Optimization in health care center · AHP
* Lorena Pradenas [email protected] Marco Fuentes [email protected] Víctor Parada [email protected] 1
Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160‑C, Correo 3, Concepción, Chile
2
Departamento de Ingeniería Informática, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, 3659 Av. Ecuador, Santiago, Chile
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Annals of Operations Research
1 Introduction Waste management in health care institutions has become a critical issue that requires the use of increasingly sophisticated management techniques (Kros and Brown 2012). Residues pose different degrees of risk to all people, including people who do not work in hospitals. The development of technology and new procedures for the treatment of different ailments in human beings has produced an increased generation of waste materials and activities that are associated with their proper handling. The increase in residue volume increases the need for management tools that optimize scarce resources and minimize risks (Mosquera et al. 2014; Soares et al. 2013). Efficient waste management is complex due to the different types of materials that need to be treated. Different types of hospital waste exist: hazardous waste, low-intensity radioactive waste, solids that are comparable to household waste and special waste. The latter comprises waste that is suspected to contain pathogen agents in a concentration that is sufficient for causing a disease. The following residues belong t
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