Investigation of life cycle assessment barriers for sustainable development in manufacturing using grey relational analysis and best worst method

ABSTRACT

Over the last few decades, there has been increasing pressure on manufacturing organisations to reduce their current level of emissions due to governmental policies on climate change and increased awareness of sustainability. To mitigate these challenges, there is a need for industries to measure and analyse environmental wastes using tools like life cycle assessment (LCA). But, to implement LCA comprehensively, it is indispensable to look at barriers that deter successful implementation of this assessment tool. The present work deals with the identification, investigation, and prioritisation of LCA barriers in the manufacturing sector of India using advanced decision-making tool: Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) and further validation using Best Worst Method (BWM). It has been found that lack of top management support, lack of education and training of employee on environmental management, and lack of team effort across supply chain partners to collect effective data as key barriers to LCA implementation with grey relational grades 0.8296, 0.6294, and 0.6219, respectively. The corresponding BWM weights have been found as 0.3232, 0.1534, and 0.1039. The present work will enable the manufacturing organisations and practitioners to apply LCA through comprehensive understanding of barriers for improved organisational sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• Barriers
• Life cycle assessment
• Grey relational analysis
• Best worst method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Nomenclature

LCA Life cycle assessment

GRA Grey relational analysis

BWM Best worst method

GHGs Greenhouse gases

SD Sustainable development

NDC National determined contributions

INDC Intended national determined contributions

ZED Zero effect zero defect

PAT Perform achieve and trade

SEA Strategic environment assessment

EIA Environmental impact assessment

MCDM Multi criterion decision-making

AHP Analytical hierarchy process

SLR Systematic literature review

ISM Interpretive structural modelling

SEM Structural equation modelling

IF-DEMATEL Intuitionistic fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mahender Singh Kaswan

Mahender Singh Kaswan is working as an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India. His areas of research are: Green Lean Six Sigma, Life cycle assessment, Sustainability and Green Manufacturing. As inspired researcher, he has presented papers in national and international conferences and published articles in various reputed journals. He is adept in optimization and decision making techniques like: ISM, Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluations, BWM, Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory.

Rajeev Rathi

Rajeev Rathi is working as an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India. His areas of research are:  Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Green Lean Six Sigma, LCA, Sustainability and Green Manufacturing. As inspired researcher, he has presented many papers in national and international conferences and published articles in various reputed journals. He is adept in optimization and decision making techniques like: ISM, Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluations, Best worst method, Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory.