Data Envelopment Analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is an increasingly popular management tool. DEA is commonly used to evaluate the efficiency of a number of producers. A typical statistical approach is characterized as a central tendency approach and it evaluates producers relative to an average producer. In contrast, DEA compares each producer with only the "best" producers. By the way, in the DEA literature, a producer is usually referred to as a decision making unit or DMU. DEA is not always the right tool for a problem but is appropriate in certain cases.