Efficiency Evaluation of Business in IoT Supply Chains by Network DEA

Abstract

Recently Internet of things (IoT) and its applications are emerging as a momentous trend in industry. Numerous hardware and software providers have been entering the intense market competition in IoT related industries. Correspondingly, the attention on evaluation of IoT industry is growing. However, it is a main theme as how to consider the multiple dimensions and dependencies among the criteria in IoT supply chains simultaneously. By considering internal processes in DMUs as well as their interactions, this study designs the evaluation methods with network data envelopment analysis (NDEA) and multi-objective programming (MOP) techniques. This work intends to estimate the efficiency of IoT businesses from the perspectives of R&D, manufacturing, sales and finance, and the overall performance. The proposed models are implemented with empirical case studies in IoT supply chains in Taiwan. The results show the usefulness and validity of the proposed methods in evaluating IoT related business.