## 4 Results
### Within-Case Analysis
#### 4.1.2 Case 2  
The interview focused on the warehouse in Capriata d'Orba (AL), where products from the food and cosmetic industries are managed (for further information on the 3 PL and warehouse features, see Table 3).  
The building is owned and was constructed by the real estate holding company belonging to the 3 PL itself, which built this warehouse for the specific needs of the operating division. Having at its disposal a fleet of transport vehicles, in terms of volumes of products managed, the 3 PL adopts a direct distribution channel from its central warehouse, which allows it to directly reach the large distribution sales points and a long intermediate channel, for which it has peripheral transit points, for all the other types of goods.  
The interviewee was asked to comment on the importance of the four macro-areas (i.e., location, external spaces, technical specifications, and internal areas) and their link with the performance indicators to understand the most important warehouse features.  
1. Location. The interviewee highlighted how belonging to a logistics park can determine a remarkable advantage regarding the procurement of skilled labour. As confirmed in many interviews, this kind of procurement is pressing and, most of the time, challenging since, in many operations, the training and the adaptation of labour have a lot of costs in terms of time and money for companies, especially when it comes to products or procedures. Specifically, in the warehouse underassessment, in which the 3 PL participates in the management of raw materials for the customer's productive processes, the closeness to the customer's plant is essential for accomplishing the value-added services. Moreover, the expert suggested that this element affected the service quality offered in terms of delivery lead time, on-time delivery, and responsiveness (rated as \"one-dimensional\"); the motivation is related to the fact that this 3 PL also provides transportation services and the proximity to the end customers contributes to significantly reducing the delivery lead time.
2. External Areas. In this area, the most important factors are the number and the density of loading docks, which, as stated by the expert, can strongly influence the quality of the reference warehouse. Therefore, also, in this case, the relationship between this warehouse features and the indicators are seen as a \"must be\" (\"M\").
3. Building. Similar to the next interview, this area is not considered as important as location and external areas in the warehouse quality assessment. In this category, the shape and dimension of the building are the most important elements, mainly due to the need for expandability for both seasonal fluctuations in demand and the firm's expansion. In contrast with the opinion of the previous interviewee, here, the flexibility is linked to these warehouse features (rated as \"one-dimensional\" or \"O\"). The building shape, size, and potential expandability are requisites for the 3 PL to perform the service flexibly.
4. Internal Areas. This area is important since it has specific equipment systems such as photovoltaic and fire-fighting systems. Even though this category was attributed low importance, it involves innovative systems that are usually considered very attractive on the market. Moreover, the presence of mezzanines is fundamental to carrying out added-value operations, so this category could affect the ability of the 3 PL to offer a wide range of logistics services (rated as \"O\").