a method to consider non-discretionary factors in data envelopment analysis

The technique for efficiency measurement known as data envelopment analysis (dea) has been developed to use nondiscretionary inputs that affect measurement. some methods proposed for measuring efficiency scores to control these factors in production. this paper review these approaches, providing a discussion of strengths and weaknesses and highlighting potential limitations. in addition, a new approach is developed that overcomes existing weaknesses and it is based on relative importance of nondiscretionary inputs. to facilitate comparison, a numerical example is used. the results show that the new approach improve pervious models and performs relatively well.