Forecasting the Production Abilities of Recycling Systems: A DEA Based Research

Abstract

Network production systems are widely observed in the current real life, and the performance management of network production systems has been widely studied. The previous literatures have contributed to the performance evaluation to parallel, serial, and converging systems. However, few literatures have considered the recycling systems. The current paper proposes a method on how to forecast the actual and frontier production abilities of recycling systems. Based on the forecasting results, the paper uses a DEA (data envelopment analysis) based method to appraise the operational efficiency of recycling systems. We choose the water utilization and recycling system as a background for our research. According to the proposed method, Chinese provincial water utilization and recycling systems are examined and analyzed. The results show that the reuse level of water in China is still very low.