The article presents a study on the effectiveness of the foundries using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. The aim of the article
is to analyze the usefulness of DEA method in the study of the relative efficiency of the foundries. DEA is a benchmarking technique
based on linear programming to evaluate the effectiveness of the analyzed objects. The research was conducted in four Polish and two
foreign plants. Evaluated foundries work in similar markets and have similar production technology. We created a DEA model with two
inputs (fixed assets and employment) and one output (operating profit). The model was produced and solved using Microsoft Excel
together with its Solver add-in. Moreover, we wrote a short VBA script to perform automating calculations. The results of our study
include a benchmark and foundries’ ranking, and directions to improve the efficiency of inefficient units. Our research has shown that
DEA can be a very valuable method for evaluating the efficiency of foundries.