Integrating DEA and Group AHP for Efficiency Evaluation and the Identification of the Most Efficient DMU

Selection problems which contain many criteria are important and complex problems that involve different approaches have been proposed to fulfill this job. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can be very useful in obtaining a likely result which can consider the decision maker's subjective ideas. On the other hand, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been a popular method for measuring the relative efficiency of decision making units (DMUs) and ranking them objectively in quantitative data. In this paper, a three-step procedure based on both DEA and AHP was formulated and applied to a case study. The procedure maintained the philosophy inherent in DEA by allowing each DMU to generate its own vector of weights. These vectors of weights were used to construct a group of pairwise comparison matrices which were perfectly consistent. Then, we utilized group AHP method to produce the best common weights compatible with the DMUs judgments. Using the proposed approach can give precise evaluation, combining the subjective opinion with the objective data of the relevant factors. The applicability of the proposed integrated model was illustrated using a real data set of a case study, which consisted of 19 facility layout alternatives.