Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Performance measurement and benchmarking are important underpinnings of our economic system, particularly the large Canadian service sector. Banks, hospitals and schools are but a few examples of organizations that can benefit from benchmarking and efficiency evaluation. By having effective tools for measuring the performance of any organization relative to its peers or competitors, that organization can have a better understanding of any gaps that may exist between where it currently stands and where its potential lies. The proposed research is aimed at developing decision support tools for modeling performance and identifying best practice in organizations. The model structure to be used is data envelopment analysis (DEA), which falls within the broader set of multi-criteria decision-making methodologies. DEA research has spanned 4 decade; the proposed research program examines some of the major issues that have arisen in the process of applying DEA to real world problems. An important area of current research is supply chain management. Having the means for analyzing supply chains and making performance comparisons between vendors and their associated supply chains , is now becoming an absolute necessity in both 'for profit' and 'not for profit' settings. The DEA methodology has the potential to become a tool of choice here, but is not robust enough in its current form to provide the detailed analysis needed. A major portion of the proposed research focuses on addressing some of these shortcomings in the DEA methodology. One important feature of the research involves the measurement and modeling of performance/efficiency in non-homogeneous multistage problems (including supply chains). This means considering settings where not all chains have the same number of stages. Furthermore, the research will look into the problem of forming partnerships/coalitions, taking into consideration pooling of resources. Another area of study involves hierarchical situations. An important application to be examined is that involving a set of electric power plants, each of which acts as an umbrella for a set of power units or sub-units under one management. This structure is characteristic of a number of problem settings in that it allows for efficiency measurement at different levels of aggregation and disaggregation.