Developing a novel model of data envelopment analysis–discriminant analysis for predicting group membership of suppliers in sustainable supply chain

The objective of this paper is to present a novel model of data envelopment analysis–discriminant analysis (DEA–DA) for predicting group membership of suppliers in sustainable supply chain context. Our new model can predict group membership of the suppliers with respect to the nature of factors including inputs, outputs, and efficiency of each supplier. To demonstrate applicability of this new DEA–DA model, using a case study, the initial DEA–DA model developed by Sueyoshi (1999) is analyzed and compared with our proposed model. The results of the analysis show that our new DEA–DA model presents more precise prediction of sustainable suppliers' group membership.