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.