Optimizing Donor Milk Bank Operations

Donated human milk – collected, processed and dispensed via milk banks – is the standard of care for premature inpatient infants and unhealthy outpatient infants whose mothers cannot provide adequate supply. We take a multi-criteria mixed-integer program approach to optimize (1) the daily decisions involved in the pooling of milk from different donors to meet macronutrient requirements across different product types, and (2) the batching of pooled milk for efficient pasteurization. Our numerical results demonstrate significant improvements compared to historical decisions at our partner milk bank.

Registration to Remy Spliet, spliet@ese.eur.nl is required for availability of lunch