Incorporation of Preferences into Supply Chains DEA Efficiency: A Geometric Attribution Approach

Among many applications, several studies using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) have examined and studied the efficiency of supply chains However, the majority of existing approaches dealing with this research area have ignored the important factor of decision makers' preferences. The main objective of this article is to provide consistent DEA models that allow for efficiency analysis in order to determine the optimal allocation of resources according to these preferences. We propose three cases that are inspired from the geometric decomposition of preference attributions: (1) horizontal attribution, which is when decision makers treat each supply chain as a single non-detachable entity; (2) vertical attribution, which is when decision makers consider supply chains detachable and (3) combined attribution, which is when decision makers concurrently assign weights to the supply chain and to its members. Based on this suggested decomposition, new DEA models are developed, and an illustrative example is applied. The obtained results are relevant and show that DEA is capable of easily incorporating the preferences of decision-makers without resorting to weight restrictions on inputs or outputs.