An integrated planning system for managing the refurbishment of thermoluminescent badges

ABC Worldwide Dosimetry Service provides a high-quality service for measuring and reporting radioactive exposure at its customers' sites. It leases thermoluminescent badges that record radioactive exposure over a prespecified time period. As each recording cycle ends, ABC must send refurbished (or new) badges to the customers before they return the old badges to ensure continuous monitoring. It then measures, recalibrates, and refurbishes the returned badges for future use. We developed an integrated system that could help ABC to manage its purchasing schedule for new badges so it can meet a target customer service level with minimal inventory. We ran our integrated system using the data ABC provided and found that our system could have helped ABC to reduce its inventory level by 17.7 percent and its costs by $820,000 within a six-month period.