Title: Efficiency improvement of decision making units: a new data envelopment analysis model

Authors: Sahar Khoshfetrat; Masoud Rahiminezhad Galankashi

Addresses: Department of Mathematics, College of Basic Sciences, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran ' Department of Material, Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (FKM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

Abstract: The main goal of this paper is to develop a new data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to use optimal weights of each decision making unit (DMU) to improve its relative efficiency aligned with other DMUs. In spite of the vast amount of studies in this area and related tools and techniques, current literature deploys the optimal weights of DMUs to calculate the DMUs' relative efficiency and benchmarking for each DMU is less investigated. In order to fill this gap, this paper proposes a model for obtaining benchmark(s) for each DMU. Furthermore, a numerical example is used to illustrate the capability of the proposed model.

Keywords: data envelopment analysis; DEA; optimal weights; benchmarks; efficiency improvement; DMUs; decision making units.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMOR.2015.072279

International Journal of Mathematics in Operational Research, 2015 Vol.7 No.6, pp.720 - 734

Received: 22 Apr 2014
Accepted: 24 Jun 2014
Published online: 08 Oct 2015 *

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