Allocating the Fixed Resources and Setting Targets in Integer Data Envelopment Analysis

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric approach to evaluate a set of decision making units (DMUs) consuming multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs. Formally, DEA use to estimate the efficiency score into the empirical efficient frontier. Also, DEA can be used to allocate resources and set targets for future forecast. The data are continuous in the standard DEA model whereas there are many problems in the real life that data must be integer such as number of employee, machinery, expert and so on. Thus in this paper we propose an approach to allocate fixed resources and set fixed targets with selective integer assumption that is based on an integer data envelopment analysis (IDEA) approach for the first time. The major aim in this approach is preserving the efficiency score of DMUs. We use the concept of benchmarking to reach this aim. The numerical example gets to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method.