A three‐stage fuzzy DEA approach to measure performance of a serial process including JIT practices, agility indices, and goals in supply chains

In this paper, a generic process in which just‐in‐time (JIT) practices are changed into agility indices, and agility indices are converted into performance measurement in supply chain has been supposed in form of a conceptual model. Then, a three‐stage data envelopment analysis (TSDEA) model has been proposed to measure the relative efficiency of aforementioned process and sub‐processes. The uncertainties of criteria in the processes were modelled through linguistic terms parameterised using fuzzy sets. Afterwards, the TSDEA had been developed in fuzzy environment. In proposed fuzzy TSDEA, each decision making unit (DMU) has been supposed to make up of three serially connected sub‐DMUs. Mathematical modelling of proposed fuzzy TSDEA resulted in great reduction of computational efforts. Moreover, fuzzy TSDEA associated an interval efficiency score to each DMU and sub‐DMU. DMU and sub‐DMU were classified based on interval efficiency scores. Solving, the proposed fuzzy TSDEA resulted in establishing managerial view into the modules and sub‐modules which required improvement in a multi‐stage process. The proposed approach has been applied in real case study of dairy supply chains.