DEA-BWM cross efficiency target setting with preferences

Abstract

Due to the existence of different evaluation perspectives, target setting has always been the key in cross efficiency development and practice. However, ignoring the preference of decision makers in the process of target setting may affect the rationality of target setting, and even may make this method unable to meet the needs of actual production. This paper innovatively combines the best-worst method (BWM) with the benevolence cross efficiency (BCE) model, and proposes four new target setting approaches for individual decision-making unit (DMU) with BWM, global optimization with BWM, BWM for individual DMU and BWM for global optimization. In order to find the optimal target DMUs in the range of production possibility set, the fifth new target setting method is proposed for global optimization of target setting and controlling. On this basis, the improvement direction of target DMUs with different methods is studied, and the influence of different cross efficiency approaches on target setting are compared. Finally, the effectiveness and practicability of those approaches are illustrated by case analysis and method comparison.