The Decay Vendor: Timing Medical Radioisotope Production to Meet a Fixed Delivery Schedule

Over 85% of nuclear medicine procedures are conducted with Technetium-99m (Tc-99m), a decay product of Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). Mo-99 has a half-life of 66.7 hours and is primarily produced by irradiating uranium in a nuclear research reactor. Due to its continuous decay the alignment of the supply chain’s just-in-time processes are critical. We present a basic structure to model and analyze this unique type of perishable supply chain. We consider how to integrate a production timing decision with a fixed delivery schedule. The objective is to maximize the viable amount of Mo-99 that makes it to the delivery given a stochastic lead time and departure. We compare a naïve approach for determining a production time to a greedy heuristic and show significant improvement potential of 5% on average and up to 22% in our test bed. We also investigate how different delivery schedules allow more viable Mo-99 to reach market