TY - JOUR A2 - Yan, Shangyao AU - Aparicio, Juan AU - Lopez-Espin, Jose J. AU - Martinez-Moreno, Raul AU - Pastor, Jesus T. PY - 2014 DA - 2014/02/13 TI - Benchmarking in Data Envelopment Analysis: An Approach Based on Genetic Algorithms and Parallel Programming SP - 431749 VL - 2014 AB - Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a nonparametric technique to estimate the current level of efficiency of a set of entities. DEA also provides information on how to remove inefficiency through the determination of benchmarking information. This paper is devoted to study DEA models based on closest efficient targets, which are related to the shortest projection to the production frontier and allow inefficient firms to find the easiest way to improve their performance. Usually, these models have been solved by means of unsatisfactory methods since all of them are related in some sense to a combinatorial NP-hard problem. In this paper, the problem is approached by genetic algorithms and parallel programming. In addition, to produce reasonable solutions, a particular metaheuristic is proposed and checked through some numerical instances. SN - 1687-9147 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/431749 DO - 10.1155/2014/431749 JF - Advances in Operations Research PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -