Development of a multi criteria decision model for justification of green manufacturing systems

Rapid industrial growth in the last century has led to many economic, environmental and social problems from global warming to local waste disposal. The industry has come under increasing pressure to reduce the environmental impacts involved in the production of goods and services. In recent years green manufacturing systems (GMS) have been widely considered for implementation to reduce environmental and social impacts as well as to improve economical competitiveness. However, the implementation of such systems is expensive and relative investments tend to be irreversible, thus, necessarily requiring careful consideration before a decision can be made. However, the managers find it difficult to justify implementation of GMS to top management as traditional economic approaches do not account for the significant intangible benefits offered by GMS. In this paper, an attempt has been made to overcome the deficiencies of traditional economic justification approaches by presenting a multi criteria decision model – analytic hierarchy process (AHP) – for the justification of green manufacturing systems. The usefulness of the model is demonstrated through an illustrative example.