Abstract
Non-ferrous metals are widely used as basic materials in various industrial fields, and zinc is a metal that is produced and used next to iron, aluminum, and copper. In this study, DEA (data envelopment analysis) was applied to measure the efficiency of 43 zinc smelters in three countries in East Asia: Korea, China, and Japan. The constant returns to scale (CRS) and the variable returns to scale (VRS) models, and the slack-based measure (SBM) were used for the analysis. As a result of the efficiency analysis, there were three efficient zinc smelters in the CRS model, 14 in the VRS model and 14 in the SBM. The average efficiency was 0.458 based on the SBM, which indicates that there is room for improvement in efficiency. In addition, the average scale efficiency value was 0.689, showing the scale to be inefficient. Therefore, it can be seen that the labor cost and the energy cost must be brought to an appropriate level. The Tobit regression analysis was used to analyze the causes of efficiency. The greater the capacity and the larger amount of bonus Zn of the refinery, the higher the efficiency of the refinery.
Highlights
A nonferrous metal refers to a metal other than iron, such as lead (Pb), zinc, tin, nickel, aluminum, magnesium, gold, silver, and platinum
The results indicated that hospitals with more hospitalized nursing homes and a lower turnover rate of nursing personnel and staff showed better efficiency and a higher quality of medical service
Efficient zinc smelters are found in the three places, and the remaining 40 zinc smelters are relatively inefficient DMUs
Summary
A nonferrous metal refers to a metal other than iron, such as lead (Pb), zinc, tin, nickel, aluminum, magnesium, gold, silver, and platinum. The nonferrous metal industry can be divided into the smelting and the processing industries. The nonferrous metal smelting industry refers to an industry that purchases nonferrous metal ores and conducts smelting and refining processes to produce metals with high purity in the form of ingots [1]. The non-ferrous metal processing industry is an industry that uses non-ferrous metal as a raw material to manufacture products through processes such as rolling, extrusion, casting, and forging. The non-ferrous metal processing industry creates various types of processing products such as plates, stands, chests, rods, tubes, etc. The non-ferrous metal industry is a capital-intensive equipment industry that requires a large amount of capital to construct a plant
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