Efficiency evaluation method for product cooperative development based on grey incidence analysis and DEA

It is the inevitable trend to cooperate in contemporary competitive business environment, especially in product development. Naturally all the participants in the cooperation are concerned about their own benefit. Therefore this study uses efficiency to measure benefit for each participant. Besides, product performance is the first in the most product development and it is much related to quality characteristics, so quality characteristics are important, they should be considered when evaluating benefit for each participant. However, methodologies for deriving the relative efficiency of each participant in the cooperation when considering quality characteristics are absent. To solve this problem, data envelopment analysis (DEA) method in which three kinds of quality characteristics are considered is proposed. A new method is developed to determine a quality characteristic is a DEA input or output. Further, grey incidence degree is introduced into the DEA model, considering the situation that inputs and outputs (quality characteristics) have different contributions on product performance. The result of the model can clearly reflect who is most benefited in the cooperation, which could be used for reference when many parties together negotiate. Finally, a numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.