Total quality management indicators and DEA for Benchmarking the Mexican Electrical Industry

Abstract

Several incentive regulation schemes for distribution companies require benchmarking techniques to measure relative efficiency and compute X-factors for tariff adjustment in a way that competition is emulated through regulation. In this paper we benchmark electricity distribution zones within the Mexican electricity industry using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The economical and technical efficiency measures obtained through DEA suggest that internal (non-regulated) total quality management (TQM) programs might also have a positive impact over efficiency, as measured by DEA.