An investigation of the undesirable outputs congestion in data envelopment analysis

Ali Hamzehee,Mohsen Rostamy-Malkhalifeh,Soodabeh Nazari

doi:10.5377/nexo.v33i02.10785

Abstract

Congestion is one of the most important subjects in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which helps the Decision Maker (DM) to decide about changing the size of units. The estimation of congestion has attractive advantages from different perspectives. For example, the total cost of a partiular DMU, in which the congestion occurs, can be reduced by the decreases in inputs. On the other hand, the output of units can be increased by the recognizing and eliminating the congestion of DMUs and so, the total profit of decision making units can be increased. Hence, the management is eager to know how to recognize and eliminate the congestion of units. Most of the existing methods to estimation of the congestion in the literature consider only the desirable outputs. This study focuses on the evaluation of congestion in the presence of undesirable outputs and proposes an approach to recognize the congestion of units. The method is demonstrated on a numerical example to illustrate the validity of the proposed method.

Highlights

Congestion is one of the most important subjects in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which helps the Decision Maker (DM) to decide about changing the size of units
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric methodology for assessing the relative efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and multiple outputs
The reduction in the undesirable outputs can result in the increases in the desirable outputs, therfore, it is important to include the undesirable outputs in the evaluation of decision making units

Summary

INTRODUCCION

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric methodology for assessing the relative efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and multiple outputs Wu et al.[29] applied the method of Seiford and Zhu [30] to address the undesirable outputs and formulated an approach Combined with the study of Wei and Yan [27] to measure the congestion of units in the presence of the desirable and undesirable outputs. This study focuses on the situation that the production process generates the undesirable outputs and proposes a method to identify the congestion of units.

PRELIMINARIES

THE PROPOSED METHOD TO RECOGNIZE THE COGESTION

NUMERICAL EXAMPLE

CONCLUSION