Parallel and hierarchical decomposition approaches for solving large-scale Data Envelopment Analysis models

Accompanying the increasing popularity of DEA are computationally challenging applications: large-scale problems involving the solution of thousands of linear programs. This paper describes a new problem decomposition procedure which dramatically expedites the solution of these computationally intense problems and fully exploits parallel processing environments. Testing of a new DEA code based on this approach is reported for a wide range of problems, including the largest reported to date: a 8,700-LP banking-industry application.