Energy efficiency assessment in automobile assembly plants by a hybrid COLS, DEA and PCA approach

Organisations that implement strategic energy management programs undertake a set of activities that, if carried out properly, have the potential to deliver sustained energy savings. One key management opportunity is determining an appropriate level of energy performance for a plant through comparison with similar plants in its industry. Performance-based indicators are one way to enable companies to set energy efficiency targets for manufacturing facilities. This article demonstrates a hybrid approach composed of corrected ordinary least square (COLS), data envelopment analysis (DEA) and principal component analysis (PCA) to analyse energy efficiency (plant-level) for assembly automobile plants that produce passenger cars, light-duty trucks, sport utility vehicles, and vans. Various assembly plants of Toyota, Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler and Saypa in Japan, USA, Germany and Iran, are considered respectively, as the case of this study. This is the first study which introduces an integrated approach for multi objective energy efficiency problems in auto industries.