Technical Efficiency of Polish Companies Operating in the Machinery Manufacturing Sector

The machinery sector plays an important role in the economy of each country providing the technology, machinery, equipment and production lines for other manufacturing sectors. Nowadays, these companies often introduce also services to their portfolio, thus exceeding the boundary between the manufacturing sector and the service sector. These actions are caused by the global trend of shifting towards a service economy and harsh competitive conditions in the market place. The aim of this article is to assess the condition of the selected group of companies operating in the sector of machinery and industrial equipment manufacturing in terms of technical efficiency, and to examine whether the number of services offered by them correlates with the efficiency score. The analysis was made using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis), which as a non-parametric method, is widely used for studding the efficiency of both business institutions and public organizations, for which the relationship between inputs and achieved outputs (i.e. the production function) is unknown. Data for the study were drawn from the EMIS (Emerging Market Information Service) database, and the sampling was made in accordance with the DEA methodology taking into account factual and statistical methods. Both, companies that offer a wide range of services and those that limit the range of services to warranty support, were analyzed, and then the results were compared and discussed.