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Summarizes a study that was carried out on behalf of a government department in Hong Kong, which provides service to public facilities. The department’s overall performance and the performance of its key divisions were examined as part of an investigation to determine whether they were in a position to compete with the private sector when the government ended the department’s monopoly in this particular sector. The department’s performance profile for a period of 16 months was constructed and the performances of two key divisions were compared. All performance measurements were made using a recent method called operational competitiveness rating (OCRA) analysis.

This paper reports a study that was carried out to obtain comprehensive performance ratings to gauge the productive and service quality performance of a public transit company using a recent performance measurement method called operational competitiveness rating (OCRA) analysis. The computed ratings incorporate the cost and revenue efficiency of operations, quality of service experience as perceived by commuters, and the quality of service delivery in specific areas measured internally. The ratings reflect the strategic priorities the company assigns to the financial and customer service implications of its operations. We demonstrate OCRA’s use as a diagnostic tool to examine a series of scenarios to construct performance profiles corresponding to different managerial priorities.

To present an actual case study that was carried out to investigate and benchmark the operational performances of two hotels in a large city.

The study involves the comparison of the hotels' performances with each other as well as their respective benchmarks on the basis of data on monthly costs and revenues. The benchmark operations are stated in terms of target costs and revenues that are derived from industry standards for comparable hotels and corporate strategic goals. For performance measurement a new non‐parametric performance measurement method called Operational Competitiveness Rating Analysis (OCRA) is used for its relative simplicity, flexibility, and ability to allow for differences in hotels' guest profiles and competitive priorities.

The areas of strength and weakness are revealed in the measured performances of the two hotels' operations. While the hotels' performances converge near the end of the study period, they both fall short of reaching their respective benchmark performance levels. This may be partly due to benchmark cost/revenue levels being set unrealistically high. OCRA is shown to be an appropriate tool for measuring and comparing hotels' operational performance.

While OCRA can also incorporate the intangible dimensions of performance, this study has not taken into consideration the quality dimension of hotel performance.

It is shown that a service operation's performance can be profiled and benchmarked using cost/revenue data.

This paper demonstrates a flexible approach to measuring operational performance in service organizations, which can be used by non‐specialists.

Unlike previous literature, this study offers a novel integrated fuzzy approach to the field of outsourcing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to use design ranges of evaluation criteria that satisfy the functional requirements (FRs) of decision makers to solve the outsourcing provider selection problem.

In this study, considering the expected significance of outsourcing evaluation criteria, and the FRs of decision makers expressed in linguistic terms, a robust multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool based on the integrated use of fuzzy Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis and weighted fuzzy axiomatic design methods is proposed for use in decision process.

The proposed method is applied to a Turkish chemical company. A sensitivity analysis is performed and the outcomes of the proposed integrated framework are compared with those of other MCDM methods such as fuzzy-based Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution, fuzzy Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje and fuzzy Multi-Objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis. This validates the usefulness and practicality of the proposed methodology.

The main contribution of this study is that it defines specific requirements that will assist company managers in eliminating alternatives that do not satisfy the needs and expectations of their company.

This paper compares the present study with other studies in the field of manufacturing. Additionally, it provides a well-documented case study, which makes the paper of value to researchers interested in the practical applications of MCDM methods.

Railway transport being a “service” is provided in a space and time dimension. Providing a better quality of service requires higher inputs, so evaluating the performance without these considerations would give a biased result. The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of the rail transport service by including the service delivery perspective of railways and look at the holistic concept of service delivery. The quality of service parameters have been chosen within the constraints imposed by availability of data and the formulated data envelopment analysis (DEA). The quality of service parameters include: punctuality; the level of consequential train accidents (safety); and the level of public complaints (customer satisfaction). It evaluates the performance of 16 zones of Indian railways (IR) on the basis of their efficiencies and identifies the exemplar zones. The results deduced from these studies can serve as performance targets in reward systems, performance scorecards, and control systems.

DEA has been used as a benchmarking tool to evaluate the relative efficiency of the 16 zones. The input parameters are working expenses, number of employees, and equated track kilometers and the output parameters are loading of revenue, punctuality, passenger traffic kilometers, consequential train accidents, and public complaints. Malmquist index has been used to determine the temporal performance of each zone.

IR can use DEA to assess the performance of various zones and for improvement monitoring in the context of being a transport service provider. Inefficient zones can identify the parameters for improvement across the zones and along the time dimension. A huge working force for all the inefficient zones indicate over deployment of resources, which can be seen at the policy level. A redundancy for equated track kilometers indicates a non-optimum use of resources. Not giving enough importance to service quality could be one of the major findings of the inefficient zones.

The scope of the quality of service variables assessed could not be enlarged in this study because of the limitation of the number of variables that can be chosen for a given number of decision-making units in the model. It is not always possible to compare each zone on an exactly equal basis as the work culture and challenges differ across zones, units, regions, and states which poses a limitation to the study.

The holistic evaluation of performance of IR by inclusion of the service parameters can have important implications for the industry. The choice, incorporation, and interpretation of the parameters of this study can be adopted for rail transportation industry. This also summarizes the essence of performance and quality of service in public rail transport sector.

The global public transport sector, and the rail mode in particular faces the challenge of identifying, and using appropriate service quality indicators and financial parameters to ascertain the efficiency and effectiveness of the transport system, rather than considering financial parameters alone. The context of this study is IR which is an engine for the continued socio-economic development of India. The overarching constraint is that the inputs are already established. Within this socio-economic contextual framework the analysis has been done to have an efficient and effective public transport system.

This is the first study which incorporates the quality of service dimensions in performance measurement and benchmarking of the railway zones that make up a national railway system which is under public domain. Each of these characteristics offers its unique challenges and dimensions which makes the problem complex.