Estimating the Technical Improvement of Energy Efficiency in the Automotive Industry—Stochastic and Deterministic Frontier Benchmarking Approaches

摘要: The car manufacturing industry, one of the largest energy consuming industries, has been making a considerable effort to improve its intensity by implementing efficiency programs, in many cases supported government research or financial programs. While manufacturers claim that they have made substantial progress improvement over past years through their objective measurement not studied due lack suitable quantitative methods. This paper proposes stochastic and deterministic frontier benchmarking models such as analysis (SFA) model data envelopment (DEA) measure effectiveness saving initiatives terms technical for automotive particularly vehicle assembly plants. Illustrative examples application proposed are presented demonstrate overall process determine best practice lines based on magnitude line shifts time. Log likelihood ratio Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient tests conducted significance SFA consistency with DEA model. ENERGY STAR® EPI (Energy Performance Index) also calculated.