Priority Index of Production Equipment: A DEA-Based Multi-Criteria Approach to Setting Investment Priorities for Industrial Production Processes

The aim of this paper is to propose and demonstrate the use of an index for ranking investment in production equipment within manufacturing companies. The construction of the index takes into account multiple criteria and relies on a data envelopment analytical model; some of those criteria are the environmental impacts and product quality. An application to a major Cuban heat interchange battery company is included in the paper in order to better illustrate the use of the proposed tool.