DEA based production planning considering technology heterogeneity with undesirable outputs

Many researchers have concentrated on production planning issues by using data envelopment analysis (DEA). However, the assumption made by existing approaches that all decision making units (DMUs) are equipped with the same level of production technology is not realistic. Additionally, with the development in the society, environmental factors have come to play important roles in the production process as well. Thus, undesirable outputs should be considered in production planning problems. Therefore, this paper considers the technology heterogeneity factors and undesirable outputs using the data envelopment analysis-based production planning approach. Two examples containing a numerical example that compare with other method and a real sample that concerns the industrial development of 30 provinces in China are used to validate the applicability of our approach.