Production planning in data envelopment analysis

The present paper extends prior researches on data envelopment (DEA)-based production planning in a centralized decision-making environment. In such an environment, the production planning problem involves the participation of all individual units, each contributing in part to the total production. The production planning problem involves determining the number of products to be produced by all individual units in the next season when demand changes can be forecasted. The current study is concerned with optimal production planning in a centralized decision-making environment. The approach proposed in this paper takes the size of operational units into consideration and the production level for each unit becomes proportional to the ability of the units. The applicability of the proposed approach in real applications is illustrated empirically using two real cases.