Analysis of interactions among the barriers of reverse logistics

The aim of this article is to analyze the interaction among the major barriers, which hinder or prevent the application of reverse logistics in automobile industries. A key task of top management is to diagnose those barriers of reverse logistics that could be crucial to the survival of the organization in the future. Existing models have focused on diagnosing these barriers independently. As a result, we lack a holistic view in understanding the barriers that hinder reverse logistics. This paper utilizes the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology to understand the mutual influences among the barriers so that those driving barriers, which can aggravate few more barriers and those independent barriers, which are most influenced by driving barriers are identified. By analyzing the barriers using this model, we may extract crucial barriers that hinder the reverse logistics activities. It can be observed that there are some barriers, which have both high driving power and dependency, thus needing more attention. An actual example of a small case automobile company provides some managerial insights into the methodology. Finally, the implications for practice and future research are discussed. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.