Evaluating Efficiencies of Turbofan Jet Engines: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Data envelopment analysis (DEA), a mathematical-programming-basedmethod, has been developed in the operations research and economics literatures for effecting efŽ ciency evaluations. Its use is explained and illustrated with an application to data on turbofan jet engines. Results are compared with standard engineering methods for measuring efŽ ciency. In contrast to the latter, DEA handles data on multiple inputs and multiple outputs that can be used to characterize the performance of each engine. This is accomplished without recourse to any use of prearrangedweights.DEAalsoprovidesinformationonthe sources andamountsof inefŽ ciencies in each inputandoutput of each enginewithout requiring knowledgeof the functional relations that give rise to these estimates. DEA represents an alternative method for evaluating efŽ ciencies. Its purpose is to augment, not replace, traditionalmethods.