An Evaluation of Supply Chain Performance of China’s Prefabricated Building from the Perspective of Sustainability

Prefabricated building is an objective requirement to achieve sustainable development of the construction industry. However, it should be noted that Chinese enterprises are characterized by an immature supply chain management mechanism, and weak environmental protection awareness and social responsibility awareness. Therefore, from the perspective of sustainable development, a performance evaluation system for a prefabricated building supply chain was established based on SEM (Structural Equation Model) and virtual frontier SBM–DEA (Slacks-Based Measure and Data Envelopment Analysis). Upon summarization of a great deal of literatures, the most influential 34 indexes were selected, after which the weight calculation and index screening were performed using SEM method. Second, the performance evaluation was conducted using the virtual SBM–DEA method. Horizontally, a comparison is made on the performance and total performance of the four sub-units (supply chain operation, economic benefit, environmental protection and social liabilities) in the supply chain; vertically, the dynamic changes of the supply chain in time dimension are assessed. After the evaluation system was applied into enterprises, research results show that factors affecting the performance of the corporate supply chain are ranked as: supply chain operation > economic benefits > environmental protection > social responsibility. At the same time, the performance of 14 supply chains was evaluated, in order to provide guidance for supply chain management in enterprises.