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A business excellence model for the hotel sector: implementation to high-class Greek
hotels
Yannis Politis Charalambos Litos Evangelos Grigoroudis Vassilis S. Moustakis
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Yannis Politis Charalambos Litos Evangelos Grigoroudis Vassilis S. Moustakis, (2009),"A business
excellence model for the hotel sector: implementation to high-class Greek hotels", Benchmarking: An
International Journal, Vol. 16 Iss 4 pp. 462 - 483
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BIJ
16,4 A business excellence model for
the hotel sector: implementation
to high-class Greek hotels
462
Yannis Politis, Charalambos Litos and Evangelos Grigoroudis
Department of Production Engineering and Management,
Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece, and
Vassilis S. Moustakis
Department of Production Engineering and Management,
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Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a business excellence model
applicable in the hospitality industry.
Design/methodology/approach – Two surveys using questionnaires were conducted: the first
one for the development of the model’s criteria and sub-criteria and the second one for the
assessment of the criteria and sub-criteria weights. The model was tested on a number of Greek
high-class hotels.
Findings – Compared with other business excellence models the proposed model includes criteria
and sub-criteria that are more applicable to hotels. The model studies the factors that drive excellence
in the hotel sector as well as the importance of these factors as they have been defined by the managers
of the hotels. The implementation of the model in a number of high-class Greek hotels shows its
applicability and suitability to be used as a benchmarking system.
Research limitations/implications – Time limitations, as the project was co-funded by the
European Union, have limited the implementation of the proposed business excellence model to a small
number of Greek hotels in the area of Crete.
Originality/value – The critical success factors for high-class hotels have been identified and a
business excellence model applicable in the hospitality sector has been developed.
Keywords Business excellence, Self assessment, Total quality management, Greece, Hotels
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Today’s extremely competitive business arena and the rapid changes in markets
worldwide have forced organizations to adjust their way of working. To confront with
these changes, organizations in any sector, of any size and structure need an
appropriate management system. Different business excellence models are
Benchmarking: An International This research has been co-funded by the European Social Fund and National Resources –
Journal
Vol. 16 No. 4, 2009 EPEAEK II and PITHAGORAS II. Views, methods, and results expressed herein are the
pp. 462-483 responsibility of the authors. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1463-5771
providing a set of challenging and constructive reviews to the first draft of the manuscript they
DOI 10.1108/14635770910972414 submitted.
implemented in many countries worldwide trying to assist organizations to improve A business
their performance (Bohoris, 1995; Vokurka et al., 2000; Cauchick, 2001). These models excellence model
provide the guidelines for effective quality management and may be used as
self-assessment models. However, organizations still face considerable difficulties and
problems when they try to measure their overall performance, to identify their
strengths and areas of improvement and to prioritize efforts. Another crucial issue is to
investigate the key performance indicators, which ensure inclusion of all potentials for 463
growth (Rickards, 2007) and the implications of various quality management systems,
as a pervasive feature of modern organizational life, for business excellence (Soltani and
Lai, 2007). These difficulties are more obvious when trying to implement the business
excellence models in particular business sectors, such as the hospitality sector.
The hospitality sector is one of the most growing sectors worldwide. It constitutes
the basic factor of Greek’s economic growth and has important contribution in the
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(EQA) was established in 1991 with the support of the European Organisation for
Quality and the European Commission. The EQA, known as the EFQM business
excellence model, is based on nine criteria. Five of these are “enablers” and four are
“results”. The “enabler” criteria cover what an organization does, while the “results”
criteria refer to what an organization achieves and the revealing assumption is that
“results” are caused by “enablers” (EFQM, 2006).
The AQA was introduced in 1988 to encourage the indigenous companies to
improve the quality of their offerings, raise their performance to world-class level, and
provide a benchmark for their achievements (Cauchick, 2001). It is administrated by
the Australian Quality Awards Foundation, a subsidiary organization of the
Australian Quality Council (AQC, 2004). AQA is revised every year by a committee
specialized in management and effective leadership in order to be up to date with
current management practices. The award measures quality performance through
seven categories of criteria. It is worth to mention that organizations that excel in each
one of the different categories of criteria are also awarded.
The Canadian Ministry of Industry introduced the Canada Awards for Business
Excellence in 1984, but revised the program in 1989 to reflect the MBNQA concept. It is
administrated by the Canada’s National Quality Institute (NQI), which awards
continuous quality improvement in Canadian organizations. The NQI, created in 1992,
is a not-for-profit organization, which provides strategic focus and direction for
Canadian organizations to achieve excellence, enabling Canada to set the standard for
quality and healthy workplace practices throughout the world. The award refers to
companies, public organizations, educational, and healthcare institutes (NQI, 2004).
All the above models follow similar procedures for the assignment of the awards.
This procedure includes the development of a report describing what an organization
achieves with regard to a predefined set of criteria. The different sets of criteria as well
as their importance to each one of these models is presented in Table I.
Current business excellence models are too prescriptive and too general to be used
by different kind of organizations with different structures and needs. Generally, they
refer to large industries with many departments and employees (Sharma and
Talwar, 2007). Problems arise when trying to implement such models in SMEs and
especially SMEs of the service sector. SMEs could not easily sustain their
competitiveness if they focus only on certain aspects of their functioning and work in
isolation (Singh et al., 2008).
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465
most distinguished
quality awards
Evaluation criteria of the
Table I.
BIJ Nowadays there is a trend for the development of specialized business excellence models
16,4 that have practice to organizations with specific characteristics or to particular business
sectors. Several researchers have tried to adopt the business excellence principles into
SMEs (Shea and Gobeli, 1995; Ahire and Golhar, 1996; Brown and Van der Wiele, 1997;
Garvare and Wiklund, 1997; Garengo et al., 2005). Others have tried to develop specific
business excellence models for specific business sectors, such as the hospitality sector
466 (Camison, 1996; Soriano, 1999), the health care sector (Naylor, 1999; Meyer and Collier,
2001; Raja et al., 2007), the public sector (McAdam et al., 2002; Prabhu et al., 2002), the
banking sector (Al-Marri et al., 2007), the higher education sector (McAdam and Welsh,
2000; Hides et al., 2004), the manufacturing sector (Gilgeous and Gilgeous, 1999; Sohal and
Terziovski, 2000), etc. In most of these cases there is an attempt to adopt the principles of
TQM and of the business excellence models in order to develop models that fit best to the
particular needs of the specific business sectors.
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Especially, for the hotel sector, the emerged need for a specialized excellence model is
derived from international literature. As it is stated in most of the literature, only a few
studies have been developed subject to TQM readiness assessment criteria in hotels
(Arasli, 2002). A cross analysis, using EFQM, of the views of quality in Valencia’s hotel
industry reveals that the application of ideas on and well tested approaches to quality
improvement play a crucial role in tourist business (Camison, 1996).
2006 with nine four-star hotels, seven five-star hotels and four more than five-star
hotels participating in it. High-class hotels from areas of all over Greece participated in
this survey (six from Athens, four from Thessalonica, five from Crete, three from
Rhodes, and two from Corfu). The results of this specific survey define the criteria and
sub criteria which are appropriate for a business excellence model applicable to hotels.
Noncrucial dimensions were rejected and others were adjusted according to the
perceptions of the hotels’ general managers. The final structure of the evaluation
criteria and of the performance qualitative scales were defined in such a way which
enables the analysis of the causes for the achieved high or low performance.
3.1.4 Survey conduction for the assessment of the criteria and the sub-criteria
weights. A second survey has taken place in order to define the weights of the criteria
and the sub-criteria of the business excellence model. This survey took place between
November 2006 and March 2007, with 80 general managers of different hotels
participating in it. In the sample used, 60 percent concerned four-star hotels, 24 percent
five-star hotels, and 16 percent more than five-star hotels. Furthermore, 28 percent
were hotels from the area of Crete, 19 percent from Athens, 16 percent from
Thessalonica, 14 percent from Rhodes and 23 percent from the rest areas of Greece.
The methodology used for the determination of the weights and the analysis of the
survey’s results are described in Sections 3.2 and 4, respectively.
3.1.5 Development of the final business excellence model for the hotels. The last step
summarizes the development of the final business excellence model for the hotels,
including the construction of the criteria and sub-criteria, the weights of all the
dimensions and the definition of the performance qualitative scales.
The proposed business excellence model for the hotel sector consists of two major
groups of criteria: the enablers criteria, which prescribe the organization’s approaches,
and the results criteria, which reflect the outcomes that the organization achieves by
deploying the specific approaches. Moreover, continuous improvement appears as an
BIJ essential condition regarding that all the results achieved are compared with past
16,4 performances or the performances of competitors.
The proposed model assumes that excellent results of a hotel with respect to
financial outcomes, operating performance, customers, employees, suppliers/partners,
and the society are achieved through leadership, which will specify the hotel’s goals,
policy and strategic planning, and which will manage effectively its human resources,
468 its available resources and its suppliers and partners. These must be accomplished
through defined processes and should focus on customer satisfaction. The proposed
model has many similarities with the most distinguished business excellence models
considering that it is based on them, but it consists of a greater number and of a more
discrete set of criteria. This makes easier the implementation of the model for the
assessment of the hotels’ performance as well as the analysis of the causes for
the achieved results. Especially, for the results criteria, the dimensions under
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3.2 A linear programming modeling for the determination of the criteria weights
The determination of the weights of the criteria that are selected for the hotel’s
self-assessment constitutes a significant part of the proposed business excellence
model. These weights represent the importance of different dimensions for the effective
management of the hotel (enablers criteria) as well as the importance of the achieved
results to hotels (results criteria). The general managers of the hotels constitute the
decision makers for the determination of the criteria weights.
In literature, the weights of the criteria can be calculated through direct or indirect
methods. Even though direct methods have the advantage that the weights derive
directly from the decision makers, there is an objection to how deeply these weights are
fully comprehended by them and therefore how easily they can distinguish the
different importance of the criteria.
Direct methods may include:
.
The distribution of a total degree of importance (10 or 100) to different criteria
(e.g. the SERVQUAL model, Parasuraman et al., 1985).
.
The pair wise comparison of the criteria importance (e.g. the AHP method, Saaty,
1980).
.
The expression of the importance preferences through the ranking of the criteria
from the most important to the least important one or the classification of
the criteria to specific classes of importance by using ordinal scales
(Grigoroudis et al., 2004; Grigoroudis and Spyridaki, 2003).
level, and plans these activities in order to support 2. Education and training
its policy and strategy and the effective operation 3. Involvement,
of its processes. The hotel’s efforts to develop an participation, and
appropriate working environment to support its empowerment of people
people, to develop their knowledge and 4. Communication
competencies and to improve the hotel’s 5. Employee’s well being and
performance by achieving business excellence satisfaction
3. Strategic How the hotel implements its mission and vision 1. Existence of a systematic
planning via a clear stakeholder focused strategy procedure for the
(customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, identification of the
society, etc.) and translates its policy and strategy strategy
through clear practices, plans, goals, and 2. Development, review, and
procedures improvement of policy and
strategy
3. Deployment of policy and
strategy
4. Communication of policy
and strategy
4. Resources How the hotel plans and manages its internal 1. Finances
resources in order to support its policy and 2. Buildings, equipment, and
strategy and the effective operation of its materials
processes 3. Technology
4. Information and knowledge
5. Suppliers and How the hotel manages and structures 1. Suppliers/partners selection
partners (e.g. relationships with its suppliers and partners who 2. Suppliers/partners
tour operators) are crucial for the achievement of its strategic management
goals 3. Review – improvement of
partnership
6. Customer and How the hotel determines requirements, expectations 1. Customer and market
market focus and preferences of its current and potential knowledge
customers and markets, builds relationships with 2. Customer relationship
customers and identifies customers’ preferences for management
the quality of the provided services and products so 3. Product/service design
as to satisfy the particular requirements of the 4. Customer satisfaction
different categories of customers determination
7. Processes How the hotel designs, manages, and improves its 1. Development, design, and Table II.
processes in order to support its policy and strategy, management of processes Business excellence
with particular emphasis on monitoring, preventing 2. Process review model for the hotel sector
nonconformities, and continuous improvement 3. Process improvement (enablers criteria)
BIJ
Criteria Interpretation Sub-criteria
16,4
1. Customer What the hotel achieves in relation to its 1. Customer satisfaction
results external customers. These results include 2. Percentage of repeated customers
customer satisfaction measured through 3. Percentage of customers that had
satisfaction surveys, the analysis of knowledge about the hotel before
470 specific indicators and the benchmarking visiting it
of the results at different periods of time, 4. Complaints
different departments and competitive 5. Compensation for accidents or
hotels losses of personal items
2. People What the hotel achieves in relation to its 1. People satisfaction
results people. These results concern employee 2. Absenteeism and sickness levels
satisfaction with the working conditions 3. Staff turnover
and the way they are managed, the 4. Training days and cost per
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4. Survey conducted
An implementation of the aforementioned linear programming modeling has been
performed in order to estimate the weights of the criteria and sub-criteria of the
proposed business excellence model. In this survey, a specialized questionnaire has
been used asking the general managers to rank the criteria and sub-criteria form the
most important to the least important one. The linear program has been implemented
separately for the enablers and the results criteria. The calculated weights have been
normalized in such a way that they sum to 100 percent. Additionally, in order to extract
the importance of the sub-criteria, the linear program has been implemented separately
for each main criterion.
Figure 3 represents the final business excellence model for the Greek hotel sector,
summarizing the enablers and the results criteria as well as their importance.
According to Figure 3, leadership and human resources management are considered
as the most important dimensions concerning the enablers criteria. This is quite
expected, considering that the human resources of a hotel, whether it concerns upper
managers or just employees, is a factor with high contribution to the quality of the
provided services of a hotel and plays an important role in the development of a high or
a low perception of customers concerning it. This is also the case in most service
businesses and it is verified by the high importance of these factors in most of the
well-known business excellence models. On the contrary, processes are not considered
of high importance for the hotel managers, as it is expected that the provided services
of a hotel are based and implemented through well specified procedures.
Similarly, customer results, is considered to be the most important criterion among
not only the results criteria but also among all the criteria of the business excellence
model. This is also the case in almost all the other business excellence models and
indicates the particular importance of customers’ services for the hotels, too. On the
0 100%
Figure 2.
Cq Cq–1 Cl C2 C1 Classes of the hotels’
managers importance
Tq–1 Tq–2 Tl Tl–1 T2 T1 preferences
BIJ
Improvements & innovations
16,4
Human
resources Customer Operating
Leadership 13%
management 11% results 13.5% results 9.5%
Processes 2.5%
472 Strategic
planning 8% Customer and
People Financial
market
results 10.5% results 8%
focus 6.5%
Resources 5.5%
Society
Suppliers/ Suppliers/partners
results 5.5%
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other hand, suppliers/partners results do not seem to be of high importance for the
hotel managers, as the cooperation level between suppliers/partners and hotels is
limited only to the provision of simple services, such as the supply of high quality
products or the ensuring of specific amount of customers and is not extended to the
development of the strategic planning or the improvement of the partnership.
A comparison of the estimated weights of the criteria of the hotels’ business
excellence model and the other known models reveals that there is a remarkable
similarity especially for the most important criteria, such as leadership, human
resources management, and customer results.
A further analysis of the sub criteria weights of the proposed business excellence
model reveals that the hotel managers consider almost every sub-criterion as quite
important to achieve business excellence in the hotel sector. This fact supports the right
choice of the specific dimensions for the development of the proposed model and shows
that a hotel needs to satisfy all of these dimensions so as to achieve business excellence.
Nevertheless, some of the sub-criteria seem to be more important for the successful
operation of a hotel. Specifically, considering the enablers criteria, education and
training of personnel, management of finances, the right selection and performance
review of suppliers/partners, customer satisfaction determination and development,
design and management of processes seem to be more important comparing to the
other dimensions of the examined criteria. Accordingly, customer and people
satisfaction, the average percentage of rooms occupied, the consumption of electricity,
turnover and the average income from tour operators seem to be of more importance
considering the results criteria. All the above are dimensions that have direct impact in
the performance of hotels and can be easily monitored and be improved.
A more thorough view of the sub-criteria weights is presented in Table IV.
5. Pilot implementation
A pilot implementation of the proposed business excellence model has been performed
to a number of high-class Greek hotels. Time limitations (the project was co-funded by
the European Union) have limited the sample of the survey to 65 high-class hotels in
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Criteria Sub-criteria
1. Leadership (13) 1.1. Development of mission, vision, goals, values, and culture (28)
1.2. Personal involvement of leaders (27)
1.3. Public responsibility and citizenship (22)
1.4. Continuous improvement of the management system (23)
2. Human resources management (11) 2.1. Human resources planning, management, and improvement (16)
2.2. Education and training (25)
2.3. Involvement, participation, and empowerment of people (18)
2.4. Communication (21)
2.5. Employee well being and satisfaction (21)
3. Strategic planning (8) 3.1. Existence of a systematic procedure for the identification of the strategy (28)
3.2. Development, review, and improvement of policy and strategy (25)
3.3. Deployment of policy and strategy (26)
3.4. Communication of policy and strategy (20)
4. Resources (5.5) 4.1. Finances (29)
4.2. Buildings, equipment, and materials (21)
4.3. Technology (25)
4.4. Information and knowledge (25)
5. Suppliers and partners (tour operators) (3) 5.1. Suppliers/partners selection (35)
5.2. Suppliers/partners management (30)
5.3. Review – improvement of partnership (35)
6. Customer and market focus (6.5) 6.1. Customer and market knowledge (21)
6.2. Customer relationship management (25)
6.3. Product/service design (26)
6.4. Customer satisfaction determination (28)
7. Processes (2.5) 7.1. Development, design, and management of processes (35)
7.2. Process review (34)
7.3. Process improvement (31)
8. Customer results (13.5) 8.1. Customer satisfaction (28)
8.2. Percentage of repeated customers (23)
8.3. Percentage of customers that had knowledge about the hotel before visiting it (16)
8.4. Complaints (22)
8.5. Compensation for accidents or losses of personal items (11)
(continued)
excellence model
weights of the business
Table IV.
A business
excellence model
473
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BIJ
16,4
474
Table IV.
Criteria Sub-criteria
65.7 percent. According to Figure 5, the Greek hotels represent a good performance
concerning the processes criterion, an expected result considering that the hotels that
have taken part in the survey are high-class hotels with well specified procedures for the
development, management, review, and improvement of the quality of their provided
services. A quite low performance is observed for the suppliers and partners criterion,
basically due to the very low participation of suppliers/partners to the hotels’ strategic
decisions and to the nonexistence of a procedure for the selection of the
suppliers/partners, which is mainly based on the prices of the products/services.
Similarly, human resources management, which is a quite significant criterion, has a low
performance index. The reasons can be found on the minor participation of personnel to
strategic decision making, on the poor training, and on the nonsystematic way of
improving communication level between the different departments of the hotels.
Similarly, according to Figure 6, the performance of the results criteria is
55.1 percent. This index is quite low, basically due to lack of available data or of their
40,0%
40%
30.4%
20%
0%
Leadership
Human resources
management
Strategic planning
Resources
Suppliers and
partners
Customer and
market focus
Processes
Customer results
People results
Society results
Financial results
Operating results
Supplier/partner
results
Figure 4.
Average business
excellence indices
BIJ Enablers criteria Performance index
16,4 65.7%
Weight
476 71.5% 13% 51.1% 11% 73.7% 8% 76.5% 5.5% 40% 3% 70.6% 6.5% 81% 2.5%
Existence of a
Development of Human resources Development,
systematic Customer and
mission, vision, planning, Suppliers/partners design and
procedure for the Finances market
goals, values and management and selection management of
identification knowledge
culture improvement processes
of the strategy
79.2% 28% 74.9% 16% 72.3% 28% 75.4% 29% 40.0% 35% 70.8% 21% 87.7% 35%
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Development,
Personal review and Buildings, Customer
Education and Suppliers/partners
involvement of improvement of equipment and relationship Process review
training management
leaders policy and materials management
strategy
82.3% 27% 46.5% 25% 70.8% 25% 92.3% 21% 17.4% 30% 57.9% 25% 82.0% 34%
Involvement,
Public Deployment of Review-
participation and Product/service Process
responsibility policy and Technology improvement of
empowerment of design improvement
and citizenship strategy partnership
people
41.0% 22% 41.5% 18% 92.8% 26% 66.1% 25% 59.5% 35% 75.4% 26% 72.3% 31%
Continuous
Communication Customer
improvement of Information and
Communication of policy and satisfaction
the management knowledge
strategy determination
system
78.5% 23% 42.0% 21% 57.9% 20% 74.9% 25% 77.4% 28%
Employee
Figure 5. well being
Analytical results and satisfaction
for the enablers criteria 53.1% 21%
poor analysis. Most of the hotels do not collect or analyze systematically the necessary
information in order to monitor their progress. This is scored with a very low grade for
the particular survey considering that even though some hotels may achieve
satisfactory results they cannot take advantage of them to improve their current
position. This also explains the slight difference of the performance between the
enablers and the results criteria.
The hotels appear to have a very low performance index regarding the society
results criterion because of the very low proportion of recycled products and of the
very low proportion of alternative resources of energy used by them. Customer results
criterion has a low performance, too. This is mainly due to the minor increase of the
repeated customers and of customer satisfaction comparing to former periods.
Relatively satisfactory performance indices considering the results criteria appear only
for the compensations given for accidents or losses of personal items, for the delays of
orders from the suppliers and for the percentage of partnership termination with tour
operators, where the performance index overcomes 70 percent.
Results criteria Performance index A business
55.1% excellence model
Weight
Suppliers/partners
Customer results People results Society results Financial results Operating results
results
53.0% 13.5% 59.7% 10.5% 30.4% 5.5% 56.7% 8% 58.5% 9.5% 67.3% 3.5% 477
Percentage of
Society perceptions
rejected products or
Customer about the social and Number of
People satisfaction Market share services due to low
satisfaction environmental policy non-conformities
quality or other
of the hotel
problems
61.5% 28% 59.6% 27% 51.5% 19% 55.4% 17% 66.2% 14% 65.0% 24%
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26.3% 23% 66.2% 15% 48.5% 23% 56.9% 18% 59.6% 17% 74.2% 24%
Percentage of
Proportion of
customers that had Average income
Staff turnover Level of waste Turnover operating costs with
knowledge about the from tour operators
respect to total costs
hotel before visitingit
47.4% 16% 64.2% 13% 46.2% 18% 61.2% 22% 48.8% 22% 59.2% 28%
Percentage of
Proportion of Average income
Training days and partnership
Complaints recycled products Global fluidity from particular
cost per employee termination with
used services
tour operators
61.9% 22% 49.6% 22% 10.8% 18% 53.8% 16% 56.5% 21% 75.0% 23%
Number of
Compensation for Proportion of Average number of
achievements and
accidents or losses of alternative sources Return on net assets rooms occupied/total
proposals from
personal items of energy used number ofrooms
employees
77.7% 11% 62.7% 23% 30.8% 22% 53.8% 21% 63.5% 26%
Loans
Figure 6.
Analytical results
51.9% 7% for the results criteria
High
16,4
Processes Resources
Strategic planning
Performance Supplier/partner results Leadership
478 Customer & market focus
People results
Financial results Operating results Customer results
Human resources management
Suppliers and partners
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Society results
Figure 7.
Low
Performance/importance
diagram
Low Importance High
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Appendix. The linear programming modeling for the estimation of the criteria
weights
The constraints of the linear program used for the estimation of the weights pi for every criterion
and every manager are:
.
If bij [ C1, which means that manager j considers criterion i of first priority then:
pi 2 T 1 þ S 2
ij . 0; bij [ C 1
.
If bij [ Cl, which means that manager j considers criterion i of such priority to the extent
that class l defines, then:
9
pi 2 T l þ S 2
ij $ 0 =
; bij [ C l ; l ¼ 2; . . . ; q 2 1
pi 2 T l21 2 S þ
ij , 0 ;
.
If bij [ Cq, which means that manager j considers criterion i of last priority then:
pi 2 T q21 2 S þ
ij , 0; bij [ C q
where S þ 2
ij and S ij are the overestimation and underestimation errors produced for each manager
m when ranking the n criteria. Therefore, the final form of the linear program can be written:
M X
X n
½minF ¼ Sþ 2
ij þ S ij
j i¼1
9
BIJ pi 2 T 1 þ S 2ij . 0; bij [ C 1 >
>
>
9 >
>
16,4 2
pi 2 T l þ S ij $ 0 = >
>
>
=
; bij [ C l ; l ¼ 2; . . . ; q 2 1
pi 2 T l21 2 S þij , 0 ; >
> ðA:1Þ
>
>
>
>
pi 2 T q21 2 Sþ , 0; bij [ C q >
>
ij ;
482
; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n and j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; M
X
n
pi ¼ 1
i¼1
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T q21 $ l
T q22 2 T q21 $ l
..
.
T1 2 T2 $ l
Sþ 2
ij ; S ij ; pi $ 0; ; i; j
where n is the number of the criteria, M is the number of the managers and l is a number given
by the user, which defines the minimum difference of the calculated values for two subsequent
classes. It is worth to mention that generally the value for l should not exceed l # 1/n, since l
cannot be greater than the weight of the criteria if they were of equal importance. A good value
for the enablers and the results criteria of the proposed model can be considered l ¼ 0.05.
The post-optimality analysis of the linear program in order to estimate the stability of the
results includes the formulation and the solution of n linear programs (equal to the number of
criteria). Each linear program maximizes the weight pi of a criterion and has the following form:
½maxF 0 ¼ pi for i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n
subject to ðA:2Þ
F # F* þ 1
all the constraints of linear program (A.1).
where F * is the optimal value for the objective function of linear program (A.1), and e is a
small percentage of F *. The average of the optimal solutions given by the linear programs (A.2)
may be considered as the final solution of the problem. In case of instability, a large variation of
the provided solutions appears, and this average solution is less representative.
journals and books, and he is author of a book on the measurement of service quality, and a large
number of research reports and papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings
referring to the analysis of consumer behaviour and customer satisfaction. His research interests
include operational research, multicriteria decision analysis, management and control of quality,
and decision support systems.
Vassilis S. Moustakis is an Associate Professor and Director of Management Systems
Laboratory at the Technical University of Crete, Department of Production Engineering and
Management. He received his diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Patras,
Greece and his Master of Engineering Administration and Doctor of Science, Engineering
Management from the George Washington University, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
He acts as reviewer for scientific journals and books, and he is author of a book on economics and
management, and a large number of research reports and papers in scientific journals and
conference proceedings referring to management, logistics, health-care administration, decision
support systems, and cost engineering.
1. Xianhai Meng, Michael Minogue. 2011. Performance measurement models in facility management: a
comparative study. Facilities 29:11/12, 472-484. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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