The 4.0 Industry Technologies and Their Impact in the Continuous Improvement and the Organizational Results: An Empirical Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents an empirical studies on the between the technologies of Industry 4.0 continuous improvement and the business results.

The topic is interesting and up-to-date, but the paper is very poorly structured and written. The paper is requires a very major revision, as follows:

• The abstract must be rewritten to better highlight the background/motivation for this study, research gap, aim and contributions of the study. At the moment the abstract presents only the method used, and some results/conclusion.
• Introduction section must be rewritten please follow the author’s guidelines: present briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. Define the aim of your paper. Identify the research gap by presenting key publications. Explain the originality of your approach.
• The literature review is too long and it lacks focus. Table and picture are sourced from other works. The originality is very low.
• Please better justify the hypotheses.
• The choice of experts is not sufficiently describe. How is the sample representative?
• The testing of hypotheses should be improved.
• There is no discussion on results in comparison to the state-of-the art. It should also include some managerial implications.
• The conclusion section must be rewritten; please highlight originality of the findings, limitations, and future research directions.
• Please proofread the paper, check the language to improve readability
• Please reformat paper in accordance with the published guidelines, e.g. acknowledgements should be after conclusions.

Author Response

The new version of the paper including your comments is enclosed here. We appreciate your suggestions very much. This revised version has been improved with their incorporation. These modifications were also made to attend the comments specified by the other Reviewers and by the Editor. New and modified content has been marked with “track changes” option. Based on your comments, the changes are the following:

Comments:

1. The paper presents an empirical studies on the between the technologies of Industry 4.0 continuous improvement and the business results. The topic is interesting and up-to-date, but the paper is very poorly structured and written. The paper is requires a very major revision, as follows: The abstract must be rewritten to better highlight the background/motivation for this study, research gap, aim and contributions of the study. At the moment the abstract presents only the method used, and some results/conclusion.

 Thank you very much for this suggestion. The Abstract has been rewritten highlighting the main aim for this study, including it on page 1 of the document.

2. Introduction section must be rewritten please follow the author’s guidelines: present briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. Define the aim of your paper. Identify the research gap by presenting key publications. Explain the originality of your approach.

We thank the Reviewer for this input. The explanation of the main goal of this paper, as well as the gap existing in the Literature and the originality of the paper has been presented in page 1.

3. The literature review is too long and it lacks focus. Table and picture are sourced from other works. The originality is very low.
   

 We sincerely appreciate the constructive recommendations of the Reviewer on this point. As commented by the Reviewer, Literature Review was long, and it has been reduced in every subsection of this section.

Table 1 and Figure 1 are included in the paper from other sources, to support this study in other relevant sources that have already analysed the theoretical part of the different Industry 4.0 technologies that will be examined in the practice in this paper.

4. Please better justify the hypotheses. The choice of experts is not sufficiently describe. How is the sample representative? The testing of hypotheses should be improved.
   

We agree with the comment of the Reviewer and have added extended discussion to justify the hypotheses of the paper. Besides, we have discussed the specific organizations and companies on which the study has been focused, with data about the representative of the sample collected. All this can be found in pages 11 and 12.

4. There is no discussion on results in comparison to the state-of-the art. It should also include some managerial implications.

The Reviewer is right. In the new version of the paper, the obtained results are analysed in comparison to previous empirical studies, such as the one of Mesa and Carreño [8], Torrent-Sellens [42] and Blanco et al. [43] (page 22). Thanks for the input. Moreover, several managerial implications, as well as implications for researchers, have been specified (pages 22 and 23). We appreciate your suggestions.

5. The conclusion section must be rewritten; please highlight originality of the findings, limitations, and future research directions.

Following your suggestion, this section has been clarified, including originality and limitations on page X of the document. We have broadened also the future research lines on page 23 of the document. Thank you very much for the input.

6. Please proofread the paper, check the language to improve Readability. Please reformat paper in accordance with the published guidelines, e.g. acknowledgements should be after conclusions.

We sincerely appreciate the constructive recommendations of the Reviewer in this point and have proofread the whole paper and reformat it, according to the published guidelines. For example, acknowledgments have been placed after the Conclusions section, on page 23.

We would like to thank the Reviewer for his/her useful and interesting suggestions, which have been incorporated into the article.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, 

I really thank you for giving me the possibility to review the paper named "The 4.0 Industry Technologies and their Impact in the Continuous Improvement and the Organizational Results: an empirical approach " . I hope you and your family are safe and well. Going on your paper I find it good, I only suggest some improvements : 

a) about the literature I suggest to include : 10.7232/iems.2020.19.3.551 and 10.3390/SU12104075; I find them very interesting about the approach e on I 4.0 and I figure they could improve your literature . Both the paper are open access so you can easily find them.

b) About your conclusions: I think that the future research has to be underlined...

Author Response

The new version of the paper including your comments is enclosed here. We appreciate your suggestions very much. This revised version has been improved with their incorporation. These modifications were also made to attend the comments specified by the other Reviewers and by the Editor. New and modified content has been marked with “track changes” option. Based on your comments, the changes are the following:

Comments:

I really thank you for giving me the possibility to review the paper named "The 4.0 Industry Technologies and their Impact in the Continuous Improvement and the Organizational Results: an empirical approach ". I hope you and your family are safe and well. Going on your paper I find it good, I only suggest some improvements: 1. About the literature I suggest to include :10.7232/iems.2020.19.3.551 and 10.3390/SU12104075; I find them very interesting about the approach e on I 4.0 and I figure they could improve your literature. Both the paper are open access so you can easily find them.

We thank the Reviewer for this input. The Literature Review has been rewritten, including the articles recommended on page 3 and page 5 of the document (references 12 and 20).

2. About your conclusions: I think that the future research has to be underlined... 

We agree with the comment of the Reviewer and have added the future research lines concerning this study, on page 23 of the document. Thank you very much for the input.

We would like to thank the Reviewer for his/her useful and interesting suggestions, which have been incorporated into the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript takes up a current and important research problem concerning the 4.0 industry technologies. The manuscript in the form submitted for review meets the requirements for scientific article. In order to increase its substantive value, according to the reviewer, it would be worth paying special attention to the following elements:

1) Hypothesis 1 seems too obvious to be verified.

2) The fact that 109 questionnaires were carried out (as we know about the population from which 109 were selected / randomly selected) requires a more detailed explanation.

3) It seems unnecessary to explain what a questionnaire (line 476-478) in a non-method scientific article is.

In the part Conclusions, a more comprehensive reference should be made to the research problem and hypotheses posed.

4) Acknowledgments are not in the right place.

5) Doubts are also raised by the method of citation, for example lines 112 (According to [11]), 116, 119, 124, 173, 175, 178, 182, 187 and so on. It seems that this is not entirely in line with the requirements of the Publishing House and there are different methods of citation (once square brackets, next time, page numbers are given). Please verify this before submitting the final version to the Publishing House.

Author Response

The new version of the paper including your comments is enclosed here. We appreciate your suggestions very much. This revised version has been improved with their incorporation. These modifications were also made to attend the comments specified by the other Reviewers and by the Editor. New and modified content has been marked with “track changes” option. Based on your comments, the changes are the following:

Comments:

The manuscript takes up a current and important research problem concerning the 4.0 industry technologies. The manuscript in the form submitted for review meets the requirements for scientific article. In order to increase its substantive value, according to the reviewer, it would be worth paying special attention to the following elements:

1. Hypothesis 1 seems too obvious to be verified.

Thank you very much for this appreciation. Hypothesis 1 is included in the paper from other theoretical sources, to support it or not in this study, since there is not yet conclusive evidence, specifically in a practical way, of it. Therefore, we think it is essential to broaden empirical research about it.

2. The fact that 109 questionnaires were carried out (as we know about the population from which 109 were selected / randomly selected) requires a more detailed explanation.

We agree with the comment of the Reviewer and have added extended discussion to justify the selection of the companies on which the study has been focused, with data about the representative of the sample collected. All this can be found in pages 12 and 13.

3. It seems unnecessary to explain what a questionnaire (line 476-478) in a non-method scientific article is.

We sincerely appreciate the constructive recommendations of the Reviewer on this point and have removed the explanations about what is a questionnaire in this version of the paper.

4. In the part Conclusions, a more comprehensive reference should be made to the research problem and hypotheses posed.

The Reviewer is right. In the new version of the paper, the obtained results are analysed in comparison to previous empirical studies, such as the one of Mesa and Carreño [8], Torrent-Sellens [42] and Blanco et al. [43] (page 22), making reference to the main aim of the article and the hypotheses posed (pages 22 and 23). We appreciate your suggestions.

5. Acknowledgments are not in the right place.

Thank you very much for your input. The Acknowledgments section have been placed after the Conclusions section, on page 23.

6. Doubts are also raised by the method of citation, for example lines 112 (According to [11]), 116, 119, 124, 173, 175, 178, 182,187 and so on. It seems that this is not entirely in line with the requirements of the Publishing House and there are different methods of citation (once square brackets, next time, page numbers are given). Please verify this before submitting the final version to the Publishing House.

 We sincerely appreciate the constructive recommendations of the Reviewer in this point and have deeply revised the method of citation in all the cites and references of the articles.

We would like to thank the Reviewer for his/her useful and interesting suggestions, which have been incorporated into the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I accept the changes made by the authors. I believe they have made a sufficient effort to improve the paper.