The purpose of this paper is to analyze the productive efficiency and the best operational practices in an armaments manufacturer.
A longitudinal case study is performed using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Using DEA, an assessment of six years in the company manufacturing process is conducted. The research aims at developing an internal benchmark on three production lines of the company.
The results show that only one of the three analyzed production lines increased efficiency over time. With this result, the most efficient production line may be used as a reference in relation to the best operational practices of the company. Moreover, it was found that the current indicators to evaluate efficiency are insufficient and may lead to wrong management decisions.
This research could allow a larger understanding of the factors that really contribute to increased operational efficiency. This is due to internal benchmark assist in the identification of the best practices. The identification of best practices can contribute to enhance the efficiency of inefficient operations without the need for external comparisons.
DEA contributes due to its robustness, for the evaluation of productive efficiency. One of the contributions of this study is to identify opportunities for improvement in key components of the operation through targets, internal benchmarking and robust assessment of productive efficiency.
