## 4 Case Study
### DEMATEL Weighting Criteria  
As previously touched, certain criteria may directly impact the feasibility and practicality of implementing measures connected to specific strategies. For instance, criteria such as \"Optimization of lead-time\" (B\({}_{1}\)) and \"Responsiveness\" (B\({}_{4}\)) directly address the agility of logistics operations. These factors are critical for ensuring timely deliveries and responsive customer service, which are essential for maintaining competitiveness in the market. On the other hand, criteria like \"Sustainability\" (B\({}_{7}\)) and \"Quality\" (B\({}_{6}\)) emphasize broader considerations beyond immediate operational concerns. While ensuring the reliability and safety of logistics operations is of paramount importance, the company also aims to address environmental impacts and uphold product quality standards to maintain long-term viability and reputation. Furthermore, criteria such as \"Supply-Chain Visibility\" (B\({}_{8}\)) and \"Supplier Performance Monitoring\" (B\({}_{9}\)) underline the importance of transparency and collaboration within the supply chain. Access to timely and accurate information, as well as the ability to evaluate supplier performance, are essential for promoting strategic partnerships and optimizing supply chain efficiency. By evaluating the mutual weights of these criteria via DEMATEL, the company can rely on a structured approach based on expert opinions in prioritizing data-driven measures addressing the most pressing needs and challenges within logistical operations. A complex brainstorming process was organized with the company management, aiming at collecting input values reflecting how the criteria reported in Table 1 influence each other. This enabled us to formalize the input matrix reported in Table 2, which collects linguistic evaluations of influence, successively quantitatively translated as described in the first point of Section 3.1. Table 3 reports the total relation matrix computed in Python, along with values of prominence and relation for each criterion. Values of prominence have been normalized to obtain criteria weights displayed in the last column of Table 3. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline
**ID** & **Criteria** & **Description** \\ \hline B\({}_{6}\) & Quality & Ensuring that customers’ goods stay safe and do not become damaged, spoiled, or lost while being transported and handled [48]. \\ \hline B\({}_{7}\) & Sustainability & Reducing the impact of logistics operations on the environment, including factors like carbon emissions, waste, water use, air pollution [49]. \\ \hline B\({}_{8}\) & Supply-Chain Visibility & The extent to which people within the supply chain have access to the timely and accurate information that they consider to be key or useful to their operations [50]. \\ \hline B\({}_{9}\) & Supplier Performance Monitoring & The ability to access supplier performance metrics that will help in supplier selection decisions and facilitate strategic partnerships with reliable suppliers [51]. \\ \hline B\({}_{10}\) & Reverse Logistics Optimization & Efficiently implementing reverse logistics, including product returns, repairs, and recycling to analyze return patterns and customer feedback [52]. \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: _Cont._Results are graphically visualized in Figure 2, from which we can immediately notice as DEMATEL assigns higher prominence to criterion B\({}_{2}\) (Satisfaction Level of Customer). From a practical standpoint, this underlines the fundamental importance perceived by the company in meeting customer expectations and fostering positive relationships. Attributing higher weight to this criterion ensures that logistical strategies are designed and executed with the primary goal of enhancing customer satisfaction. Following closely behind, the criterion of Quality (B\({}_{6}\)) appears to be crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction, as neglecting quality considerations can lead to damaged or lost goods, resulting in potential business losses.