Integrating Industry 4.0 and circular economy principles in emergency third-party logistics service provider selection: a new multi-criteria decision-making approach

Key findings from this study

• The study found that delivery/service performance, cost, safe/healthy work environment, human resources policies, technological capabilities, and financial capability constitute the six most significant sub-criteria for emergency third-party logistics provider evaluation.
• The researchers demonstrate that accounting for interdependencies among criteria produces substantially different final weights and provider rankings compared to independence-based approaches.
• The authors propose that integrating economic, social, Industry 4.0, and circular economy criteria creates a more comprehensive evaluation framework than traditional logistics metrics alone.

Overview

The study develops a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making framework integrating Industry 4.0 technologies, circular economy principles, and sustainability practices for evaluating emergency third-party logistics service providers. The approach combines fuzzy stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and weighted influence non-linear gauge system (WINGS) techniques. Implementation in a disaster management organization evaluated five service providers across 27 sub-criteria using expert knowledge.

Methods and approach

The two-stage hybrid methodology employs fuzzy SWARA in stage one to calculate independent criterion weights. Stage two applies WINGS to rank providers while accounting for interdependencies among criteria. The framework incorporates economic, social, Industry 4.0, and circular economy dimensions. Five domain experts from a disaster management organization provided evaluative input for the case application.

Results

Six sub-criteria emerged as most important: delivery/service performance, cost, safe and healthy work environment, human resources policies, technological capabilities, and financial capability. The comparative analysis demonstrated that incorporating criterion dependencies substantially altered final weights and provider rankings. Accounting for interdependencies produced materially different results compared to independence assumptions.

The proposed approach successfully differentiated among five emergency third-party logistics service providers based on performance metrics. The integration of multiple sustainability dimensions identified critical performance indicators relevant to disaster management contexts. Results demonstrate the feasibility of applying advanced multi-criteria techniques to complex logistics provider evaluation problems.

Implications

The framework provides organizations with a structured methodology for selecting emergency logistics providers under conditions of multiple, interdependent criteria. By incorporating Industry 4.0 and circular economy dimensions alongside traditional logistics metrics, the approach reflects contemporary organizational sustainability commitments. The demonstrated importance of criterion interdependencies suggests that prior evaluation methods employing independence assumptions may produce suboptimal provider selections.

This work establishes precedent for applying integrated sustainability criteria to emergency logistics contexts. Organizations managing disaster response operations can adopt the proposed framework to align provider selection with technological and environmental objectives. The methodology's flexibility permits adaptation to different organizational contexts and criterion priorities.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.