A Hybrid MCDM for the Location of Urban Distribution Centers under Uncertainty: A Case Study of Casablanca, Morocco

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1: First of all, the writing style is very poor. The manuscript should be thoroughly examined and all grammatical errors, typos, and other issues should be fixed.

Response 1: all writing has been carefully reviewed by an English-speaking colleague.

Point 2: The abstract of the paper does not clearly describe the innovation of the paper.

Response 2: the abstract briefly describes the content of the writing. The literature review on each point and the choice of methods in relation to the context is the contribution of this writing. The latter can be described in four points:

- We made a state of the art of localization problem which is recent (from 2018)

- We did a literature review of the criteria for choosing CDU location problems, and we mainly based ourselves on the territorial criteria, since they are very little dealt with in the literature (unlike the economic, societal, and environmental criteria).

- The use of the combined approach (F-SWARA+F-ENTROPY, F-VIKOR) for the localization of a CDU in a fuzzy environment is a first in the literature. In addition, the use of a hybrid method (F-SWARA+F-ENTROPY) for the weighting of the criteria is a real contribution since the hybridization of these methods makes it possible to take into consideration the opinion of the experts who have at the base divergent opinions (point for which the SWARA method was chosen), and to subsequently correct the uncertainty of the information given using the ENTROPY method. The hybridization of its methods gives more precise results

- Sensitivity analysis validated the model used

The abstract has been slightly modified to take your comment into consideration.

Point 3: Classification is quite confusing and, in some cases, unnecessary. Please correct it.

Response 3: we classified our problem and the methods of resolution compared to the existing one. (See Table 1)

Point 4: The article uses existing methods. What is research innovation?                                     

Response 4: the proposal of a hybrid approach between these three methods, considering fuzzy logic, and which exactly addresses our problem is the innovation of this writing.

Point 5: The reasons for choosing the MCDM methods are not sufficient.

Response 5: the reasons for the choice of methods have been added to the new version.

Thank you for your comments, and I hope I have answered all your comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper aimed at proposing a decision support process for the evaluation and selection of the location of  Urban Distribution Centres in a fuzzy environment. A hybrid methodology based on F-SWARA, F-entropy, and F-VIKOR is proposed to obtain the decision-making results.  The proposed approach is applied to the city of Casablanca to show its validity and applicability.  The sensitivity analysis is also carried out to show the robustness of the model. The idea of this paper seems interesting. But, the paper lacks terms of scientific innovation and technical representation. However, the paper can be improved by considering the following issues.

 1.      The title of this paper does not fit well. Please rewrite the same keeping in mind the scientific culture of the paper. Why there is a full stop? 

2.      The Abstract part should be revised carefully. Please mention the significance and novelty of the paper. 

3.      There are too many abbreviations in the Abstract. It is not a good practice to write abbreviations in the Abstract. 

4.      Introduction section is inadequate. I would also recommend briefly discussing in the introduction what is found in the paper, and how the findings make a contribution to the theory and practice, to provide a comprehensive view of the paper in this section to the reader will find in it.

5.      The introductory section must appropriately highlight the motivations and objectives of this research by reporting what are the performance improvements compared to well-known fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making in the literature.

6.      The motivation for this is not highlighted in the manuscript. The manuscript's value is hidden to the reader. It needs to be emphasized in a paragraph clearly. Why do authors use the F-SWARA, F-entropy, and F-VIKOR based hybrid methods? What is the need of this study?

7.      The citation style of the references is not standard. Please follow the standard citation style in the text.

8.      The description of the method section seems a bit confusing. Some basic concepts and definitions of the method need to be added.

9.      The name of Section 2.2.1 should be ‘Triangular fuzzy number’. The authors used triangular fuzzy numbers. These are not intervals.

10.  In Figure 1 flow of Ranking of alternatives to F-VIKOR is wrong. Also, there is a phrase/expression other than English.

11.   In section 3.3 the authors claimed that the most appropriate value of \mu is 0.6. Why?

12.  In section 3.4, step 7 is written in other than English.

13.  There is no conceptual comparison with existing approaches and no discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of the new approach. Thus discussions and comparative analyses should be added, also it is important to compare your method with the literature ones.

14.  What guarantee do we have that the proposed method gives more effective results?

15.  The description of future research directions should be extended in the last Section. Must emphasize the rationale and enhancements for future research based on the findings of this study.

16.  Please add the following references and cite them properly in the text or in the future scope of this article- https://doi.org/10.1007/s41066-021-00308-9; https://doi.org/10.1007/s41066-021-00290-2

17.  There are several punctuation issues throughout the paper. The manuscript should be revised carefully with the help of an expert. 

Author Response

Comments were answered in the order in which they were asked

• the title has been modified according to your instructions
• the abstract briefly describes the content of the writing. The literature review on each point and the choice of methods in relation to the context is the contribution of this writing. The latter can be described in four points:

- We made a state of the art of localization problem which is recent (from 2018)

- We did a literature review of the criteria for choosing CDU location problems, and we mainly based ourselves on the territorial criteria, since they are very little dealt with in the literature (unlike the economic, societal, and environmental criteria).

- The use of the combined approach (F-SWARA+F-ENTROPY, F-VIKOR) for the localization of a CDU in a fuzzy environment is a first in the literature. In addition, the use of a hybrid method (F-SWARA+F-ENTROPY) for the weighting of the criteria is a real contribution since the hybridization of these methods makes it possible to take into consideration the opinion of the experts who have at the base divergent opinions (point for which the SWARA method was chosen), and to subsequently correct the uncertainty of the information given using the ENTROPY method. The hybridization of its methods gives more precise results

- Sensitivity analysis validated the model used

The abstract has been slightly modified to take your comment into consideration.

• The abbreviations correspond to the title of the problem and the methods of resolution
• The introduction part has been modified according to your instructions
• The introduction part has been modified according to your instructions
• the reasons for the choice of methods have been added to the new version.
• The citation style has been changed
• The methodology part briefly presents the concepts and methods used. The details of the concepts and methods are presented in the case study part
• The name of section 2.2.1 has been changed according to your directives
• Figure 1 has been modified according to your instructions
• We explained the choice of the value 06 in the new version of the manuscript
• Section 3.4 has been modified
• In the conclusion, the advantages and areas for improvement of the method have been explained. Also, for this type of work, it is difficult to compare the general approach with other approaches in the literature, since the problem is never exactly the same. Nevertheless, the problem has been treated with respect to several methods (F-SWARA, F-VIKOR), (F-ENTROPY, F-VIKOR) and (F-SWARA+F-ENTROPY, F-VIKOR).
• By comparing the proposed approach with other approaches in the literature, we find that the approach is reliable, in addition, the experts claim that the choice of location seems the best.
• The future direction part and the limitations are presented in the conclusions part.
• The references you suggested have been added
• all writing has been carefully reviewed by an English-speaking colleague.

Reviewer 3 Report

Compliments to the authors. For the first time, a novel combination of methodologies for locating urban distribution locations was introduced. Also helpful for practical studies about the location of UCCs and doing sensitivity analysis based on multiple criteria.

Author Response

Thank you for your answer 

Reviewer 4 Report

The research presented in the paper has a real interest.

The term « We » (ex: lines 10, 11) is too personal. Could you avoid it in the paper?

The abstract has to be improved!

-       Expressions like “to do so” or in the end have to be suppressed.

-       The problem has to be more explained: what is the problem to solve

-       You have to explain the position of the work in the literature

-       You have to present clearly how the problem will be solved

-       English has to be improved

Introduction

The English language must be improved!

Lines 32 to 36 : the sentence has to be improved ;

Lines 38 and 41: CDUs or UDCs

Lines 37 to 40 has to be improved

Lines 48 to 51 : the sentence is not clear!

Lines 59 to 63: the section 2 presents the problem or literature review? This is not clear!

Lines 67 to 69 : please improve the sentence

Line 88 : correct the sentence ; [8] proposes

In the literature review, the problem to solve has to be explained before expressing the different sections presented. The objective is to present what has been done and show what could be the research objective. Due to the lack of explanation on the problem to solve, it is difficult to suggest topics to study for completing the literature review. But it seems that research on operational research, artificial intelligence and decisional (and optimization) aided tool topics have to be presented in this part. The English language has to be improved.

The methodology part seems good but needs to be improved (mistakes)!

It would be interesting to present for the decision-making process part, the general proposition before illustrating it on the Casablanca city. One again, pay attention to the English expressions.

The conclusion is good but needs to be corrected according to English expressions and mistakes. The research presented in the paper is interesting, but the article has to be seriously improved by authors for increasing its quality.

May be an English native review would be a good idea.  

Author Response

Comments were answered in the order in which they were asked

• Personal pronouns have been banned from the article
• The abstract has been edited according to your instructions
• The expressions 'to do so' and 'in fine' have been deleted according to your instructions
• The problem to be solved is the location of urban distribution centers in a fuzzy environment considering territorial criteria. The problem was well explained in the case study
• The position of the work has been explained in table 1
• The methodology part explains the approach that has been adopted
• All writing has been carefully reviewed by an English-speaking colleague.
• The lines you have highlighted have been modified according to your instructions
• The methodology part has been modified according to your instruction.
• The decision-making process part was presented briefly in the methodology part and was developed much more in the case study.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The major and minor concerns regarding this manuscript and the quality of this study have not been carefully handled. Therefore, in view of these, I recommend the rejection of this paper again.

Author Response

Hello,
First of all, I thank you for your remarks which make progress this work.
this work deals with the location of urban distribution centers. First, we did a complete literature review (we examined nearly 80 articles on the subject and we retained 30, including 13 that deal with the problem in fuzzy logic) and news (all references do not go beyond 2018) . secondly, you have chosen to deal with the problem with a hybrid approach based on decision support methods. we explained in the third part the methods that we will use. Fourth, we made a complete case study, starting from the beginning of the problem until the choice of the location: we determined the stakeholders by a literature review and the CATWOE method. We then determined the criteria and validated them through interviews with the stakeholders. once we have all the elements, we conducted our study to find the data, and then deal with the problem with the F-SWARA and F-ENTROPY methods for the weighting of the criteria, and F-VIKOR for the ranking of the alternatives. This approach allowed us to choose the best location to install a CDU.
the contribution of this writing is to present a new approach composed of three MCDM methods. this new approach made it possible to eliminate the subjectivity of the criteria by using the F-SWARA method with F-ENTROPY. and the combination with F-VIKOR gave robust results comparing with the literature.

I tried to take into consideration the maximum of your remarks, which made it much advanced, I worked hard for this work, and I hope that it will live up to your expectations.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have revised their paper as per the reviewer's comments. However, there are still some writing issues like sentence structure and typos throughout the paper. In the conclusion section, consider changing the sentence "...so the next research will be directed towards Phytagorean [44] and Fermatian fuzzy numbers[45]." to "...so the next research will be directed towards quasirung fuzzy sets [44] and q-rung fuzzy numbers [45]."

The entire reference section is not uniform and is beyond the standard of the Journal. In some references page no. vol no, year are missing for example Ref. [8], [28], etc. Some references are wrongly written e.g. [21],[45]. In some places, DOI numbers are missing.  Please follow a standard rule in writing the Reference section.

The authors are strongly advised to double-check the whole paper as well as the Reference section before publication with the help of an expert. 

Author Response

Hello,
Your comment on quotes 44 and 45 has been taken into account.
regarding references, all references have been rewritten with the MLA standard.
The article has been reviewed in its entirety and several parts have been revised following your comments.
thank you for your remarks which make this work progress.

Reviewer 4 Report

This version of the paper is better than the previous one.

May be storage instead of Stockage : line 34

So could be suppressed in line 43

Line 56: I don’t understand the sentence “Our problem…”

Before line 59, may be a paragraph for introducing how the problem will be solved will increase the quality of the paper.

At the beginning of the literature review, may be a small paragraph on the keywords issued from the problem could be nice for justifying each part of this literature review.

Why do you introduce a new literature review line 302 ?

Please improve the sentence in line 470: “the following are …” it seems you forget one word.

Line 482 : I think it is not “.” But “;”.

The global consistency of the paper has to be improved : each part has to be explained more simply. What is the problem? What solutions or suggestions have been elaborated in the literature? what are the solutions ? etc.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand the reason of sentences or ideas.

This work will definitively increase the paper quality. 

Author Response

Hello,
All comments on typos, deleted words or added paragraphs have been taken into consideration.
 
thank you for your comments which help to improve this work.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have not done the requested corrections properly.

Author Response

Hello,
Four remarks were given in the first review, and I tried to handle them as best I could, this version offers another way to handle them.
The first remark concerns the style of writing: all the text has been reviewed by a professional.
For the second remarks on the summary: the contribution of the text has been added to the summary.
the third remarks concern the innovation of the article: it is explained in the introduction part in the paragraph beginning with: "After carefully studying the literature"
the fourth remarks concern the choice of MCDM methods, the choice was made following a long thought, and was argued in the part where each method is explained and at the end of each paragraph the choice of the method in relation to d 'other methods almost similar.
I tried to go around for each remarks, I hope to have rectified the shots, and in case of other remarks that you are more explanatory.
Best regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have substantially revised their manuscript. The paper can now be accepted in its present form. 

Author Response

Thank you for your trust.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.