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A formal waste reduction report was prepared for a light duty truck assembly facility by an outside consultant in August 1990. A follow-up investigation of the facility was commissioned of the same consultant in October 1992. The purpose of the new study was to determine the extent to which waste minimization concepts had been adopted into the operations of the facility and to measure their effectiveness. This paper investigates the reasoning behind the implementation of several of the original recommendations and discusses the rationale why certain recommendations were chosen over others. In the course of this discussion, the actual recommendations are analyzed and the economic and environmental effects are compared with the original practice.

This paper elucidates the major issues complicating strategic investment decisions in manufacturing waste systems. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), an innovative approach in decision theory, is applied to these decisions in a manufacturing plant at General Motors Corporation. When compared with capital budgeting models, AHP is found to offer a superior approach due to its comprehensive mechanism, a feature urgently needed to handle the increasing legal, economic and technological complexities of manufacturing wastes.