Machine learning approaches have been developed rapidly and also they have been involved in many academic findings and discoveries. Additionally, they are widely assessed in numerous industries such as cement companies. Cement companies in developing countries, despite many profits such as valuable mines, face many challenges. Optimization, as a key part of machine learning, has attracted more attention. The main purpose of this paper is to combine a novel Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach in optimization at the first step to find the Decision-Making Unit (DMU) with innovative clustering algorithms in machine learning at the second step introduce the model and algorithm with higher accuracy. At the optimization section with converting two-stage to a simple standard single-stage model, 24 cement companies from five developing countries over 2014–2019 are compared. Window-DEA analysis is used since it leads to increase judgment on the consequences, mainly when applied to small samples followed by allowing year-by-year comparisons of the results. Applying window analysis can be beneficial for managers to expand their comparison and evaluation. To find the most accurate model CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes model), BBC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper model) and Free Disposal Hull (FDH) DEA model for measuring the efficiency of decision processes are used. FDH model allows the free disposability to construct the production possibility set. At the machine learning section, a novel three-layers data mining filtering pre-processes proposed by expert judgment for clustering algorithms to increase the accuracy and to eliminate unrelated attributes and data. Finally, the most efficient company, best performance model and the most accurate algorithm are introduced. The results indicate that the 22nd company has the highest efficiency score with an efficiency score of 1 for all years. FDH model has the highest efficiency scores during all periods compared with other suggested models. K-means algorithm receives the highest accuracy in all three suggested filtering layers. The BCC and CCR models have the second and third places, respectively. The hierarchical clustering and density-based clustering algorithms have the second and third places, correspondingly.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on hospitals and healthcare systems around the world. The cost of business disruption combined with lingering COVID-19 costs has placed many public hospitals on a course to insolvency. To quickly return to financial stability, hospitals should implement efficiency measure. An average technical efficiency (ATE) model made up of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) for assessing efficiency in public hospitals during and after the COVID-19 pandemic is offered. The DEA method is a non-parametric method that requires no information other than the input and output quantities. SFA is a parametric method that considers stochastic noise in data and allows statistical testing of hypotheses about production structure and degree of inefficiency. The rationale for using these two competing approaches is to balance each method’s strengths, weaknesses and introduce a novel integrated approach. To show the applicability and efficacy of the proposed hybrid VRS-CRS-SFA (VCS) model, a case study is presented.

The steel industry has great impacts on the economy and the environment of both developed and underdeveloped countries. The importance of this industry and these impacts have led many researchers to investigate the relationship between a country's steel consumption and its economic activity resulting in the so-called intensity of use model. This paper investigates the validity of the intensity of use model for the case of Iran's steel consumption and extends this hypothesis by using the indexes of economic activity to model the steel consumption. We use the proposed model to train support vector machines and predict the future values for Iran's steel consumption. The paper provides detailed correlation tests for the factors used in the model to check for their relationships with the steel consumption. The results indicate that Iran's steel consumption is strongly correlated with its economic activity following the same pattern as the economy has been in the last four decades.