Performance assessment of Dairy Cooperative Societies (DCSs): an AHP based composite index approach

Dairy Cooperative Societies (DCSs) maintain the availability and supply of clean processed milk in accordance with consumer needs, as well as the provision of essential milk products of the appropriate standard to consumers at competitive prices. In this study, numerous aspects responsible for the success of India’s Dairy Cooperative Society (DCS) have been taken into account before developing a composite index. The criteria addressed include milk union support, DCS support, governance and management support, allied support, and common support factors for DCS performance evaluation. The current study is projected to empower the dairy industry by offering a tool that can evaluate the relative success of DCSs and assist milk unions and dairy organizations in tailoring their assistance to their specific requirements. We deployed the Analytical Hierarchal Process (AHP) to determine the weights of specified criteria and sub-criteria impacting DCS performance; these weights were deployed to determine the relative performance of a DCS using the composite index developed in the study. Criteria such as governance and management support given to members, and support received from milk unions have significant weightage- 0.3002, 0.2854, and 0.2715, respectively. We also deployed the suggested technique to conduct a comparative analysis of 98 DCSs identified from six Indian provinces constituted under NDP I (National Dairy Plan, Phase-I). Finally, the results of the sensitivity analysis have been presented to validate our proposed method.