Efficiency measurement to identify the best efficient unit in the presence of dual-role factors

Abstract

Efficiency measurement is crucial to management for performance evaluation of several decision-making units (DMUs) in order to find the most efficient unit. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a practical and popular method that has been used widely for efficiency measurement in many applications. Thus, in the literature of DEA, several mixed integer DEA models are developed to efficiency measure and find the best efficient unit. In some situations, some factors named dual-role factors may be simultaneously considered as both inputs and outputs. However, a little attention has been paid in the literature of DEA to these types of factors. The current paper develops a new mixed integer linear DEA model to identify the best efficient DMU in the presence of dual-role factors. The basic DEA models consider different roles for each dual-role factor, and also solve at least one model for each DMU to determine the best unit. However, the developed approach in this paper considers a unique role for each dual-role factor, and also determines the best unit through by solving just one mixed integer DEA model. Two numerical examples are used to illustrate the profits and applicability of the developed approach.