Fuzzy data envelopment analysis: An adjustable approach

• Published in: Expert systems with applications 2019-12, Vol.136, p.439-452
• Main Authors: Peykani, Pejman, Mohammadi, Emran, Emrouznejad, Ali, Pishvaee, Mir Saman, Rostamy-Malkhalifeh, Mohsen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Data analysis; Data envelopment analysis; Decision making; Fuzzy data envelopment analysis; General fuzzy measure; Hospital efficiency; Operations research; Possibility theory; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0957-4174; 1873-6793
• DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2019.06.039

•Presents a novel fuzzy DEA based on a general fuzzy measure.•Develops an adjustable and flexible fuzzy DEA model to consider DMUs’ preferences.•Applying the adjustable FDEA model for measuring efficiency of hospitals in USA. Possibilistic Data Envelopment Analysis (PDEA) is one of the most applicable and popular approaches in the literature to deal with imprecise and ambiguous data in DEA models. In this approach, with respect to tendency of decision maker (DM) in taking optimistic, pessimistic and compromise attitude, three measures including possibility, necessity and credibility measures are used to form the Fuzzy DEA (FDEA) models, respectively. However, decision makers may have different preference and so it is necessary to customize fuzzy DEA models according to properties of DMUs. This paper proposes a novel fuzzy DEA model based on general fuzzy measure in which the attitude of DMUs could be determined by the optimistic-pessimistic parameters. As a result, the proposed FDEA model is general, applicable, flexible, and adjustable based on each DMUs. A numerical example is used to explain the proposed approach while usefulness and applicability of this approach have been illustrated using a real data set to measure efficiency of 38 hospital in United States.