A Review of Green Supplier Evaluation and Selection Issues Using MCDM, MP and AI Models
Fariba Goodarzian
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper provides an analysis of 10 literature reviews (containing 1,098 papers published between 1990 and 2020) on green supplier evaluation and selection models. The result shows that the MCDM model is the most used; the AHP model is the most well-known DM method, then the DEA and TOPSIS.
The paper is interesting to read. There are several issues in this paper that need to be considered.
1. The authors need to reduce the rate of similarity with other papers: Turnitin: 38% similarity index, 25% exclude Bibliography.
2. The paper synthesizes the results from 10 other review articles. I wonder if the results are duplicated. Why do the authors not do their own review instead of going through other reviews?
3. Research questions weren’t presented. Please revise it.
4. The open issues and challenges section are not convincing. Please revise them.
5. More citations from Sustainability/MDPI are required.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments. The corresponding changes and refinements made in the revised paper are presented in our response below.
Point 1: The authors need to reduce the rate of similarity with other papers: Turnitin: 38% similarity index, 25% exclude Bibliography
Response 1: Thank you for this comment we are working on the rate of similarity
Point 2: The paper synthesizes the results from 10 other review articles. I wonder if the results are duplicated. Why do the authors not do their own review instead of going through other reviews?
Response 2: The number of 1098 articles used by these 10 journals brings together the majority of high-quality articles that deal with our subject. So if we worked on our own review we would use a very small percentage of these articles, which are undoubtedly among the 1098 very reputable articles, for these reasons synthesizing, will give us very reliable results on the types of models used to treat our problem.
Point 3: Research questions weren’t presented. Please revise it.
Response 3: Thank you for this relevant comment, the research questions sections have added between lines 74-83 as follow:
The systematic literature review is The method of assessing, examining, and analyzing all available literature pertaining to a particular research issue, subject area, or interesting phenomenon. This is a useful method for synthesizing previous research, identifying gaps in the literature, and paving the way for new research directions. In this review, we study the following research questions:
· RQ1: What are the relevant literature reviews that worked on the DM models to solve the issues of assessment and choice of green supplier between 1990 and 2020?
· RQ2: What are the most often utilized DM models in the literature to address the problems for evaluation and selection the green supplier?
Point 4: The open issues and challenges section are not convincing. Please revise them
Response 4: The open issues and challenges have added in the conclusion between lines 563-575 as follow:
The limitations of this paper is that the plurality of the review articles were found using the Scopus and WOS databases, Scopus and WOS are large databases of management and science journals, However, the collection does not contain all peer-reviewed articles; as a result, a few significant papers on GSES problem may have been missed. Furthermore, since the study focuses on just single models analysis, a few other analysis by combined models would not have been included. Finally, the criteria of green supplier evaluation and selection used in DM models is not identify, which can more help researchers to choice the appropriate model for their GSES problems. In the future research, we can working on GSES criteria using in top identified DM models. In addition, we can studding the combined models used to solve GSES issues. Finally, we will conduct a case study of our work by using the most popular models that we have found as result in this work (AHP, DEA or TOPSIS) to select and evaluate a green supplier for an automotive industry.
Point 5: More citations from Sustainability/MDPI are required.
Response 5: Three citations from Sustainability in 2022 have added as follow:
[59] Bennani, M.; Jawab, F.; Hani, Y.; ElMhamedi, A.; Amegouz, D. A Hybrid MCDM for the Location of Urban Distribution Centers under Uncertainty: A Case Study of Casablanca, Morocco. Sustainability 2022, 14, 9544. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159544
[72] Okyere, S.; Yang, J.; Adams, C.A. Optimizing the Sustainable Multimodal Freight Transport and Logistics System Based on the Genetic Algorithm. Sustainability 2022, 14, 11577. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811577
[74] Castro e Silva, A.d.; Seleme, R.; Silva, W.d.A.; Zattar, I.C.; Nara, E.O.B.; Júnior, O.C.; Benitez, L.B. Evaluation and Choice Criteria of Sustainable Suppliers in the Construction Industry: A Comparative Study in Brazilian Companies. Sustainability 2022, 14, 15711. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315711
Please note that it has been difficult for us to add further citations because, after the article has been placed to the sustainability template, the references no longer appear automatically.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Title: A systematic review of multi-criteria decision-making…
Manuscript ID: sustainability-1982983
Authors: Tronnebati et al.
Dear Authors,
Thank you for the opportunity to read your article. I found the topic is interesting and fundamental. Generally speaking, the methods and results were clearly presented while the discussion of the results need more addition with fair point of view. I suggest that this article will be revised extensively before its re-submission for another review process if applicable. As a conclusion, I recommend its major revision at this state.
I hope my comments are helpful.
Good luck,
A reviewer
Major concerns:
“Abstract”
->Please consider shortening the article title as it is too long. You may remove unnecessary words, such as “systematic”.
“Keywords”
->Please consider providing keywords that are not used in the article title.
“1. Introduction”
-Lines 35: “The main goal of [4]…”->Please be more specific.
-Lines 65-67: “…our paper reviewed the literature reviews…10 literature reviews…”->Please consider mentioning the selection criteria of those reviews.
-Based on your literature review, please consider clearly mentioning the unique contribution of this work.
“2. Research method: Research Process of…”
-Lines 82-83: “You have performed a manual filtering procedure.”->(a) We performed a manual filtering procedure. (b) Please consider mentioning the details of “manual filtering procedure” and its criteria.
-In this section, please consider mentioning the detail procedure and criteria of “Database keyword search”, “Tittle and abstract filtering”, “Full text filtering”, selection of “10 literature” from “43 complete filter papers”.
“4. Result”-> 4. Results
-Lines 390-392: “The goal of [8] is to…”->Please consider revising the statement. What is the original contributions of this work? If you refer to the literature, it is difficult to understand the originality of the work.
“5. Discussion”
-Figures 18 and 19: Please consider combining them to formulate one figure as they have basically the same information and you did not discuss Figure 19.
-Line 470: “Focusing on the studies and the analysis of the ten-literature review.”->Please complete the sentence as it is currently incomplete.
“7. Conclusion”-> 6. Conclusions
-In this section, you may state some future perspectives.
Minor concerns:
-Please consider polishing English more. You may use some of my comments above for this purpose.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments. The corresponding changes and refinements made in the revised paper are presented in our response below.
Point 1: “Abstract”
->Please consider shortening the article title as it is too long. You may remove unnecessary words, such as “systematic”.
Response 1: The article title have been shorting as follow:
“A review of green supplier evaluation and selection issues using MCDM, MP and AI models”
Point 2: “Keywords”
->Please consider providing keywords that are not used in the article title
Response 2: Thank you for your relevant comment, Please not that keywords used on the title is the most important keywords used in the article for that we are choosing theme as keywords. Two keyword have added as follow
Keywords: Green supplier; Supplier relationship management ;Supplier selection; Supplier evaluation; Decision-making; multi-criteria decision-making; mathematical programming models; artificial intelligence models
Point 3: “1. Introduction”
-Lines 35: “The main goal of [4]…”->Please be more specific.
Response 3.1: Thank you for your interesting remark, please note that we are using several references to put our subject in context, for this we have limited ourselves to presenting just the objective of each reference.
-Lines 65-67: “…our paper reviewed the literature reviews…10 literature reviews…”->Please consider mentioning the selection criteria of those reviews.
Response 3.2: The selection criteria of the 10 literature reviews have added between lines 62-66 as follow:
However, the purpose of this study is to provide a thorough analysis of 10 literature reviews on green supplier evaluation and selection models. Those reviews are choosing based on four criteria that is : the data based quality “WOS and SCOPUS”, the time horizon between 1990 and 2020, the number of studies articles: focusing on the biggest number of articles and the topic that would help us achieve our objectives to identify the MCDM,MP and AI models using to solve GSES problems.
-Based on your literature review, please consider clearly mentioning the unique contribution of this work.
Response 3.3: the unique contribution of our work have added between lines 66-69 as follow:
However, the purpose of this study is to provide a thorough analysis of 10 literature reviews on green supplier evaluation and selection models. Those reviews are choosing based on four criteria that is : the data based quality “WOS and SCOPUS”, the time horizon between 1990 and 2020, the number of studies articles: focusing on the biggest number of articles and the topic that would help us achieve our objectives to identify the MCDM,MP and AI models using to solve GSES problems. A total of 1098 articles published between 1990 and 2020 were identified. Therefore, our contribution is analyses the result of all those 1098 articles founded on the 10 literature reviews, and then find which are the most popular MCDM, MP and AI models using to solve GSES problems.
Point 4: “2. Research method: Research Process of…”
-Lines 82-83: “You have performed a manual filtering procedure.”->(a) We performed a manual filtering procedure. (b) Please consider mentioning the details of “manual filtering procedure” and its criteria.
Response 4.1: The details of “manual filtering procedure” have added between lines 93-98 as follow:
The three writers carried out the manual filtering procedure independently. The first and second writers used qualitative coding to retrieve data from the primary studies they had chosen. After collecting and analyzing the coding of the primary documents, the results were obtained. The third author coached and audited the entire procedure.
-In this section, please consider mentioning the detail procedure and criteria of “Database keyword search”, “Tittle and abstract filtering”, “Full text filtering”, selection of “10 literature” from “43 complete filter papers”.
Response 4.2: Thank you for your interesting remark, the selection criteria for the 10 literature review from 530 paper have added in the introduction between lines 62-66 as follow:
Those reviews are choosing based on four criteria that is : the data based quality “WOS and SCOPUS”, the time horizon between 1990 and 2020, the number of studies articles: focusing on the biggest number of articles and the topic that would help us achieve our objectives to identify the MCDM,MP and AI models using to solve GSES problems.
These criteria have used in all the four phases.
Point 5: “4. Result”-> 4. Results
-Lines 390-392: “The goal of [8] is to…”->Please consider revising the statement. What is the original contributions of this work? If you refer to the literature, it is difficult to understand the originality of the work.
Response 5: In this result section, we have presented the objective of each review among the 10 literature reviews in order to understand the general context of the article then we have analyzed their results.
Point 6: “5. Discussion”
-Figures 18 and 19: Please consider combining them to formulate one figure as they have basically the same information and you did not discuss Figure 19.
Response 6.1: We appreciate your careful suggestion, for this we have only reserved Figure 18 and deleted Figure 19.
-Line 470: “Focusing on the studies and the analysis of the ten-literature review.”->Please complete the sentence as it is currently incomplete.
Response 6.2: Thank you for your comment, we have modified all the sentences as follow: (lines 481-483)
This section will give a discussion of 1098 papers (see Table VII) published between 1990 and 2020 (see Fig. 12), based on the examination and evaluation of the findings of the ten literature reviews.
Point 7: “7. Conclusion”-> 6. Conclusions
-In this section, you may state some future perspectives.
Response 7: The future perspectives and limitations have added in the conclusion between lines 563-575 as follow:
The limitations of this paper is that the plurality of the review articles were found using the Scopus and WOS databases, Scopus and WOS are large databases of management and science journals, However, the collection does not contain all peer-reviewed articles; as a result, a few significant papers on GSES problem may have been missed. Furthermore, since the study focuses on just single models analysis, a few other analysis by combined models would not have been included. Finally, the criteria of green supplier evaluation and selection used in DM models is not identify, which can more help researchers to choice the appropriate model for their GSES problems. In the future research, we can working on GSES criteria using in top identified DM models. In addition, we can studding the combined models used to solve GSES issues. Finally, we will conduct a case study of our work by using the most popular models that we have found as result in this work (AHP, DEA or TOPSIS) to select and evaluate a green supplier for an automotive industry.
Point 8: Minor concerns:
Please consider polishing English more. You may use some of my comments above for this purpose.
Response 8: Thank you for your comment, we are working on the polishing English more.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1 In Abstract: decision-making (DM) please change to Decision-Making (DM)
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) please change to Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)
2 Authors should state clearly about novelties/achievements in Abstract. I cannot find any novelties
3 In Introduction: supply chain management (SCM) please change to Supply Chain Management (SCM)
green supplier evaluation and selection (GSES) Please change to Green Supplier Evaluation and Selection (GSES)
Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) please change to Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM)
weighted sum method from model (WSM) please change to Weighted Sum Method (WSM) from model
analytic hierarchy process (AHP) please change to Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Artificial neural network based approach (ANN) please change to Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based approach
4. Authors should address new studies (2021 and 2022) in Literature review
5.There is no scope for future research. A clear direction for future research is required.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments. The corresponding changes and refinements made in the revised paper are presented in our response below.
Point 1: 1 In Abstract: decision-making (DM) please change to Decision-Making (DM)
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) please change to Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)
Response 1: Thank you for your comment, the requested changes are made in the lines 10 and 18
Point 2: Authors should state clearly about novelties/achievements in Abstract. I cannot find any novelties
Response 2: Thank you for your interesting remark, Please take note that we were able to identify the three most popular models (AHP, DEA, and TOPSIS) used in 1098 articles to solve the GSES issues after presenting the results of the 10 literature reviews in the result section and the analyses performed in the discussion section. This result allows researchers to easily choose the appropriate model to treat the same problems.
The novelties/achievements have presented between the lines 17 and 23 in abstract.
Point 3: In Introduction: supply chain management (SCM) please change to Supply Chain Management (SCM)
green supplier evaluation and selection (GSES) Please change to Green Supplier Evaluation and Selection (GSES)
Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) please change to Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM)
weighted sum method from model (WSM) please change to Weighted Sum Method (WSM) from model
analytic hierarchy process (AHP) please change to Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Artificial neural network based approach (ANN) please change to Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based approach
Response 3: Thank you for your comment, the requested changes are implemented in the lines 40, 46, 49, 54, 55 and 58.
Point 4: Authors should address new studies (2021 and 2022) in Literature review
Response 4: Three citations from Sustainability in 2022 have added as follow:
[59] Bennani, M.; Jawab, F.; Hani, Y.; ElMhamedi, A.; Amegouz, D. A Hybrid MCDM for the Location of Urban Distribution Centers under Uncertainty: A Case Study of Casablanca, Morocco. Sustainability 2022, 14, 9544. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159544
[72] Okyere, S.; Yang, J.; Adams, C.A. Optimizing the Sustainable Multimodal Freight Transport and Logistics System Based on the Genetic Algorithm. Sustainability 2022, 14, 11577. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811577
[74] Castro e Silva, A.d.; Seleme, R.; Silva, W.d.A.; Zattar, I.C.; Nara, E.O.B.; Júnior, O.C.; Benitez, L.B. Evaluation and Choice Criteria of Sustainable Suppliers in the Construction Industry: A Comparative Study in Brazilian Companies. Sustainability 2022, 14, 15711. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315711
Please note that it has been difficult for us to add further citations because, after the article has been placed to the sustainability template, the references no longer appear automatically.
Point 5: There is no scope for future research. A clear direction for future research is required.
Response 5: The future perspectives and limitations have added in the conclusion between lines 563-575 as follow:
The limitations of this paper is that the plurality of the review articles were found using the Scopus and WOS databases, Scopus and WOS are large databases of management and science journals, However, the collection does not contain all peer-reviewed articles; as a result, a few significant papers on GSES problem may have been missed. Furthermore, since the study focuses on just single models analysis, a few other analysis by combined models would not have been included. Finally, the criteria of green supplier evaluation and selection used in DM models is not identify, which can more help researchers to choice the appropriate model for their GSES problems. In the future research, we can working on GSES criteria using in top identified DM models. In addition, we can studding the combined models used to solve GSES issues. Finally, we will conduct a case study of our work by using the most popular models that we have found as result in this work (AHP, DEA or TOPSIS) to select and evaluate a green supplier for an automotive industry.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thanks for updating the manuscript. I have no other questions.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
As all the comments were addressed, I would suggest the journal accept this article for its publication.
Best regards,
A reviewer
