Hybrid methods for ranking DMUs that combine performance and improvement trend over successive periods

The paper proposes two methods that rank business units (e.g., ports, hubs and restaurants) not only by their performance functions values at certain points in time, but also by the derivatives of the performance functions, i.e., by trends. Two hybrid methods for fully ranking of decision making units (DMUs), where each DMU has multiple inputs and multiple outputs are proposed. The methods combine the performance and the improvement trend over successive periods into one index. The first method, DEA/AHP, is an extension of a known method and is based on two common methodologies ‐ data envelopment analysis (DEA) and analytical hierarchical process (AHP). The second hybrid method DEA/Malmquist ranks DMUs by computing the average relative efficiency and the geometric mean of the Malmquist index. The applicability of the proposed methods is demonstrated for a real‐life case study with ten fast‐food hamburger restaurants.