Evaluating environmentally conscious manufacturing barriers with interpretive structural modeling

Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) has been applied to a number of organizational decision problems. It is a technique that is helpful to managers in organizing the relationships among a series of factors that may influence their decision. The decision support technique has a long history dating back to the late 1960's and early 1970's. Yet, its application and investigation by researchers to a variety of topical areas has not occurred until very recently. This lack of application is especially true for investigation into topics related to environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM). We find that the barriers to this organizational practice can be further investigated and analyzed with ISM. This paper seeks to provide an illustrative example of this procedure. More complete evaluation and implementation of this technique is recommended for its validation.