Structural Comparison of Data Envelopment Analysis and Multiple Objective Linear Programming

The concept of efficiency as it applies to Decision Making Units (DMUs), solutions, alternatives plays an important role both in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multiple Objective Linear Programming (MOLP). Despite this and other apparent similarities, DEA and MOLP research has developed separately. We show that structurally the DEA formulation to identify efficient units is quite similar to the MOLP model based on the reference point or the reference direction approach to generate efficient solutions. DEA and MOLP should not be seen as substitutes, but rather as complements. We show that they cross-fertilize each other. MOLP provides interesting extensions to DEA and DEA provides new areas of application to MOLP.