## 5 Conclusions  
Finding DMU targets or DMU projections is useful for strategic planning in some organizations. In these organizations, a convexity assumption does not exist, and decisionsare made on the basis of pareto solutions. Therefore, these properties should be considered in practical models. Moreover, by eliminating the convexity assumption, FDH models can be applied. As suggesting a technique with mentioned properties has been neglected in previous research, the main novelty of this paper is in its suggestion of this technique. In this regard, the answers to the two research questions are as follow:  
1. Is it possible to propose a technique to find all DMU targets in non-radial FDH models based on ASBM using IM? Using IMs such as STEM to find DMU targets in non-radial FDH models on the basis of slack variables can be an important subject and it is applied in the proposed technique.
2. Is it possible to find DMU targets of non-radial FDH models in the proposed technique without solving any mathematical models? In this research, in addition to using STEM for finding DMU targets in non-radial FDH models, DMU targets of non-radial FDH models were found by extended RBA without solving any mathematical models.  
As has been explained previously, after determining inputs, outputs and DMUs in the first and second case studies, four DMUs from 17 DMUs (76% of DMUs) and two DMUs from 13 DMUs (15% of them) lay on the efficient frontier, respectively. So, in applying the second interactive stage for the first and second case studies, 76% and 20% of DMUs could be selected as targets, respectively. Moreover, the targets of all non-radial FDH models were found using extended RBA without solving any mathematical programming model. In fact, the obtained results can be extended to other cases considering practical and theoretical views.  
As mentioned previously, using real data related to inputs, outputs, and DMUs is preferred rather than gathering them from experts' opinions according to the proposed technique. However, if gathering real data was impossible, experts' judgement would be used. In this situation, experts should access real data or have enough information about the problem. The existence of, and access to, such experts can be considered as the first limitation of this study. We assumed that there are no outliers, and this assumption can be considered as the second limitation of this research. Furthermore, all required data existing in deterministic form can be considered as the third limitation of this study.  
Detecting outliers and investigating the sensitivity of the modeling approach to outliers in the proposed technique, finding DMU targets using other IMs, using impressive data in supply chain management, and adopting the proposed technique in situations where data are fuzzy can be considered as future studies.  
Conceptualization, M.A. and M.R.M.; methodology, M.A. and M.R.M.; software, M.A. and M.R.M.; validation, M.A. and M.R.M.; formal analysis, M.A. and M.R.M.; investigation, M.A., M.R.M. and P.F.W.; resources, M.A. and M.R.M.; data curation, M.A.K. and M.A.; writing--original draft preparation, M.A., M.R.M. and P.F.W.; writing--review and editing, M.A. and M.R.M.; visualization, M.A., M.R.M. and P.F.W.; supervision, M.A. and M.R.M.; project administration, M.A.; funding acquisition, P.F.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa (FAPER).  
Not applicable.  
This project (Determining Appropriate Operations Strategies of Organizations and improving their Operations Performance using Data Envelopment Analysis method: A Case Study in Fars Province Pharmaceutical Distributions Companies) was financially supported by Research Council of Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran.  
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.