Abstract

Vaccination is hailed as one of the greatest scientific achievements of the past century. However, affordability and accessibility prevent low-income countries from realizing the full benefit of immunization. This study applies operations research methods to a hypothetically coordinated global vaccine market with quantity-based discounts to minimize procurement and holding costs while ensuring investment recovery of manufacturers. The effects on affordability of fixed-costs, holding costs, cold-chain capacity, and tender length (i.e. the maximum number of years ahead markets are willing to order supply from producers) are analyzed for each income-based segment of the global market. Experimental results show that increases in both tender length and cold-chain capacity have a significant positive influence on affordability for most market segments, especially the low-income segments. The results reported give insights into how vaccine procurement decisions could be structured at each income level to improve affordability of the buyers while ensuring profitability of the producers.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Vaccines--Economic aspects--Developing countries; Supply and demand; Operations research

Publication Date

6-26-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Industrial and Systems Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Industrial and Systems Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Ruben Proano

Advisor/Committee Member

Katie McConky

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

ISEE-MS

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