© IEOM Society Apartment Building Management Performance Assessment Using Data Envelopment Analysis Wei Tong Chen and Jien-Bin Jian Department of Construction Engineering National Yunlin University of Science and Technology Touliu, Yunlin 640, Taiwan chenwt@yuntech.edu.tw, jimmy74712@gmail.com Hong Long Chen Department of Business and Management National University of Tainan Tainan, 700, Taiwan along314@mail.nutn.edu.tw Abstract This study reviews improvement of operations and decision making through the utilization of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the operational efficiency of 24 apartment buildings based on four dimensions: operations finance, management systems, service quality and personnel quality. Eight items are used to assess case operational efficiency and five output items are obtained. It is found that the total efficiency typically averaged more than 90% for the four dimensions used to evaluate case efficiency. Personnel quality made little contribution to Decision Making Unit (DMU) efficiency. The optimal efficiency for each dimension was found in DMU09 (operational finance), DMU23 (management system), DMU22 (service quality) and DMU18 (personnel quality). DMU10 is considered the benchmark case while DMU23 is the least ideal and most in need of improvement. Keywords Apartment building, performance assessment, data envelopment analysis 1. Introduction Apartment building management requires integrating a variety of business operations and services, and is a fundamental key service industry with considerable output value and employment effects. The management and execution of these business items requires the attention of a professional team. In Taiwan, apartment building management firms (ABMFs) are typically selected by tender, and determination of whether to extend the contract for the following year is made through irregular on-site performance assessments by the management committee accompanied by management firm executives. This type of assessment method is easily influenced by the subjective opinions of the resident management committee members or the management firm executives, and does not easily reflect actual objective conditions. Therefore, Taiwan’s ABMFs face a serious challenge in establishing an objective and reasonable comparison mechanism based on objective field data analysis as the basis for performance assessment. Such a mechanism would establish performance benchmarks, identify areas of poor performance and assist the organization in improving overall operating performance. Performance assessment not only allows for an understanding of employee contributions, but also provides insight into the degree to which an organization has realized its goals, thus providing solutions for assessing the effectiveness of human resource allocation and the organization’s strategic development process. Assessing staff performance provides managers with information required to achieve the organization’s goals and improve management deficiencies. Through mathematical modeling of inputs and outputs, data envelopment analysis (DEA) calculates production boundaries as the basic measurement of efficiency, citing the concept of the production function in executing efficiency assessment. DEA is widely used in various industrial sectors including sewage treatment plants (Ramón Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Operations Excellence and Service Engineering Orlando, Florida, USA, September 10-11, 2015 110