Extending Allocation Stages of Fixed Costs Between Decision Making Units Using DEA

A good idea for a decision maker to protect and increase the efficiency of the decision-making units (DMUs) in an organization, is to allocate the fixed costs between them based on their efficiencies. Since, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a suitable method to calculate the efficiency, allocating fixed costs to DMUs based on the two-stage network DEA (NDEA) approach is done by researchers. But due to some limitations (like producing a product in several steps, receiving incomes in several stages and etc) and some organization necessities, it is impossible to do this allocation just in two-stages. In this paper, we suggest a model for allocating the fixed cost among DMUs in more than two-stage network DEA approach, so that more than allocating the fixed cost, increasing in efficiency is also considered. Also, a benchmark example in reality is presented to illustrate the model and its applications.