Managing Service Productivity: Using Frontier Efficiency Methodologies and Multicriteria Decision Making for Improving Service Performance

This volume describes how frontier efficiency methodologies such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and other techniques such as multi-criteria decision making can help service industries to improve their performance by providing a ranking of best-practice efficient service units and by identifying sources of inefficiency for each service unit. It explains how they can be used to determine potential improvement targets for each of the inefficient service units, to identify peers for each service organization and to provide a basis for continuous performance improvement. Presenting applications in a variety of industries, this book will be useful for the service management to improve service productivity, profitability, sustainability and quality and effectiveness of service deliveries. A free trial version of the World’s leading Data Envelopment Analysis Software (PIM-DEA) is available for readers of this book.

Ali Emrouznejad is a Reader in Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School in Birmingham, UK. His areas of research interest include performance measurement and management, efficiency and productivity analysis as well as data mining. Dr Emrouznejad is Editor of Annals of Operations Research, Associate Editor of Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Associate Editor of IMA journal of Management Mathematics, Senior Editor of Data Envelopment Analysis journal and member of editorial boards or guest editor in several other scientific journals including Journal of Operational Research Society, EURO Journal on Decision Processes, Journal of Medical Systems, International Journal of Society Systems Science, International Journal of Applied decision Sciences, International Journal of Productivity Management and Assessment Technologies and International Journal of Energy Management Sector. He is author of the book on “Applied Operational Research with SAS”, editor of thebook on “Performance Measurement with Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis”. He is also co-founder of Performance Improvement Management Software (PIM-DEA).

Emilyn Cabanda is an Associate Professor of Operations at Regent University in Virginia Beach, USA. She served as visiting professor at International Christian University (2007) in Tokyo, Japan and in the International Graduate School of Social Sciences at Yokohama National University (2006), Yokohama, Japan. Her research interests include information communication technology (ICT), efficiency and productivity measurements and performance management. Dr. Cabanda is the editor of the book on “Performance Management: Application of Data Envelopment Analysis in the Philippine Setting” and author of the book on “Privatisation and Performance of Asian Telecommunications”. She sits in the International Editorial Review Board of International Journal of Business Analytics and editorial board member of Journal of CurrentResearch in Global Business. Dr. Cabanda published in peer-reviewed journals including International Transactions in Operational Research, Information & Management, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Central European Journal of Operations Research, International Journal of Financial Services Management, International Journal of Banking and Finance, International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector, and ASEAN Economic Bulletin.