Industry-4.0-Enabled Digital Transformation: Prospects, Instruments, Challenges, and Implications for Business Strategies
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Very interesting and well written paper in line with the scope of the journal. You may find below some comments by my side:
· The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of Industry 4.0 technologies in driving digital transformation in contemporary organizations. However, it would be beneficial to integrate the concept of Society 5.0 into the discussion as it aims to create a sustainable and inclusive society by leveraging emerging technologies. By incorporating Society 5.0, the paper could provide a more holistic perspective on how Industry 4.0 technologies can contribute to societal well-being beyond organizational competitiveness.
o Mourtzis D, Angelopoulos J, Panopoulos N. A Literature Review of the Challenges and Opportunities of the Transition from Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0. Energies. 2022; 15(17):6276. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15176276
· The authors can also discuss some digital transformation frameworks that provoked as a result of the pandemic.
o Mourtzis, D., Panopoulos, N. (2022). Digital Transformation Process Towards Resilient Production Systems and Networks. In: Dolgui, A., Ivanov, D., Sokolov, B. (eds) Supply Network Dynamics and Control. Springer Series in Supply Chain Management, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09179-7_2
o Ivanov, D., Dolgui, A. and Sokolov, B., 2019. The impact of digital technology and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics. International Journal of Production Research, 57(3), pp.829-846.
o Ivanov, D. and Dolgui, A., 2021. A digital supply chain twin for managing the disruption risks and resilience in the era of Industry 4.0. Production Planning & Control, 32(9), pp.775-788.
· The literature gap should be further explained and emphasized.
· Focusing on a single database might be appropriate for specific research questions or when time and resources are limited, it is generally advisable to search multiple databases to ensure the comprehensiveness and validity of the literature review. There could be valuable research articles that are not indexed in the database you have selected, and a wider search could provide a more holistic understanding of the topic. Please explain and if possible elaborate and expand the literature review.
· It is recommended to integrate Industry 5.0 and society 5.0 models in the Discussion and Outlook of the paper. Also, you should refer to the common challenges between Industry 4.0, Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0.
· Some inconsistencies in the referencing style used throughout the manuscript have been noticed. I would like to recommend that you follow the reference style of the template provided by the journal.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper provides a literature review regarding Industry 4.0 and digital transformation. Althought the number of manuscripts reviewed is large, there are several aspects of the paper that may need the attention of the authors.
They main concerns of this reviewer are: few technical/academic soundness, technical writing aspects and lack of novelty and/or unclear contribution.
Technical/academic soundness
The authors review an important number of manuscripts; however, the reader finds some technical concepts that are not precise or clear at all. To cite some:
- Section 5 (line 288), it can be read “I4.0 technologies can be classified as digital and physical” and sensors and drones are classified as physical whereas cloud computing, blockchain and big data are classified as digital. In fact, sensors and drones include digital processing of the data, and apparently authors are mixing the concept of virtual and digital. It is not clear if they reffer to: digital/analogic, physical/virtual or harware/software when trying to illustrate that classification with the examples provided.
- Aligned with the previous comment, in line 195, it can be read: “Such companies do not need physical capacity”, when refering to “new digital companies”. Indeed, digital companies may not require hosting their own servers and other compunting and/or networking resources in their facilities, but they need to ask for them to a cloud provider for example (e.g., when requesting a cloud provider for a number of virtual machines, even physical servers, with certain computing requirements), so they need that capacity, althought it may be shared, requested on demand (escaled) and not owned by those companies, but, at the end, physical capacity is needed to perform computation, run the business, provide webservices, etc.
- Regarding blockchain technology (BCT), authors write “Besides, keeping an accurate track of inferior quality products and helping to identify additional transactions of those products has the potential to decrease the need for rework and recalls, which in turn reduces the use of resources and greenhouse gas emissions. Among other advantages of blockchain are better decision-making, procurement, product management, accountability and visibility that not only boosts business processes, but also decrease costs and time.” as additional beneffits arising thanks to the adoption of BCT. However, they omit the counter part, since two of the potential disadvantages/challenges of BCT are energy consumption and the cost of the technology, as it can be read in [A] “The main disadvantage of the Blockchain is the high energy consumption.” and “The high costs are a big disadvantage of the Blockchain. The average cost of the transaction is between 75 and 160 dollars and most of it covers by the energy consumption [12]. One of the reasons of this situation has been described above. The second reason is the high initial capital costs of the Blockchain [8].”
[A] J. Golosova and A. Romanovs, "The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Blockchain Technology," 2018 IEEE 6th Workshop on Advances in Information, Electronic and Electrical Engineering (AIEEE), Vilnius, Lithuania, 2018, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/AIEEE.2018.8592253.
- Regarding cloud computing, in lines 398 and 403 authors refer to real-time, and to cloud computing and IoT in lines 394; nevertheless, cloud computing has been proben to be not as efficient as expected in IoT and real-time -based environments. In fact, fog computing [B] and edge computing play a critical role on those scenarios involving IoT and real-time needs.
[B] F. Bonomi, et al., “Fog Computing and Its Role in the Internet of Things”, Proc. of MCC workshop on Mobile cloud computing, pp. 13-16, August, 2012.
- The manuscrit is cleary balanced on highlihting the advantges of the technologies reviewed, but pays few or none attention to their challenges, disadvantages and/or drawbacks.
- This reviewer misses “hot topic” Industry 4.0 -related technologies, such as digital twins, fog/edge computing or IIoT, among others. By restricting to Journals only, top trends on research may have been excluded, thus reducing the technical soundness and interest of the manuscript.
Technical writing
- Citation criterium is not clear: references are not cited in order and not referred properly.
- Revise the use of “&” against “and” in the manuscript, the mixed writing of “et al.” with and without italics, naming (e.g., “cybersecurity” vs “Cyber Security”), define acronyms the first time they appear in the text, missing “(CC)” near “Cloud Computing”, in figure 1, among others.
- The S. No. in the tables is not referred in the text and it is not clear, which criteria are considered to order the data in the tables according to those S. No.?
- Revise some inconsitencies in data; to cite some: total % in certain tables does not sum 100% (e.g. Table 1…); authors refer to “David & Haan (1984)” line 11 vs “David & Han (2004)” line 128 as the same manuscript for the methodology considered; is the number 2581 correct in line 136?; in line 368 authors refer to “Ivanov et al., 2018” and in line 726 to “Ivanov & Dolgui, 2020” but in the references 119 and 120, they refer to “Ivanov, D. and Dolgui, A. (2019)” and “Ivanov, D., Blackhurst, J. and Das, A. (2021)” showing diferent years.
- Figures are missing, only tables are provided. Moreover, tables summarizing the works reviewed and its classification accordding to the diferent criteras are missing.
- Revise “numbering” in the last paragraph of first section, since it starts numbering the second section as the first section “First section outlines the methodology” (note that according to the manuscript, first section is the Introduction).
- Conclusions include so many references that it seems more background or introduction rather than conclusions section. Please consider rewriting this section, including the most relevant findings, challenges and adoptions identified and or proposed.
Novelty and contribution
- Please, clearly identify challenges and suggestions identified/proposed by the authors. A table may help.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Introduction:
The introduction section of the paper is mainly focused on Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and its impact on digital transformation. However, it lacks a clear statement of why the research is being carried out and what the authors aim to achieve through their review. To address this gap, the authors should clearly state their research objectives and explain how they plan to achieve them. Furthermore, they should highlight the novelty of their review in comparison to existing research, such as those published in journals [1-4].
Section 2:
In this section, the authors provide an overview of Industry 4.0 and its potential benefits for digital transformation. They discuss the role of various technologies and highlight their impact on business operations. They should add some numerical in-text referencing to support their claims. Some of the articles that might be of interest https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789248593.0000; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113546; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102149; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2020.10.028.
Section 3:
This section focuses on the instruments required for implementing Industry 4.0 and its impact on business strategy. The authors discuss various instruments such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics. They should remove sub-section 3.1 and integrate its content into section 3. The authors should provide more examples to support their arguments.
Section 4:
This section discusses the challenges associated with Industry 4.0 implementation and its impact on business strategy. The authors should avoid repeating the same points mentioned in the introduction section. Instead, they should focus on providing new insights and examples to support their arguments.
Conclusion:
The conclusion section is extensive and needs to be concise. The authors should summarize their key findings and emphasize the implications of their review for future research and business practice. They should also highlight the novelty of their review and its contribution to the existing literature.
Overall, the review is unclear in terms of its primary objective and the novelty of the authors' research. The authors should clearly state their research objectives and explain how they plan to achieve them. They should also highlight the uniqueness of their review in comparison to existing literature. Lastly, they should replace the blue lines in Figure 1 with black lines to improve its visibility.
References:
[1] Garcia-Sanchez, F., Alcarria, R., & Martin, D. (2021). Industry 4.0 in Agriculture: A Review of Current Trends and Future Directions. Sensors, 21(5), 1658.
[2] Baños, R., García-Sánchez, F., Alcarria, R., & Sánchez-González, L. (2022). Digital Transformation in the Agri-Food Sector: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Journal of Business Research, 142, 113546.
[3] Li, J., Li, M., Li, H., & Li, J. (2022). The Effects of Industry 4.0 on Social and Economic Sustainability: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Technology in Society, 69, 102149.
[4] Kweka, O., Govender, I., & Adeniji, A. A. (2020). Industry 4.0 and Its Implications for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Developing Economies. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 107, 383-396.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have revised the manuscript taking into consideration the comments raised by the reviewers. Therefore it is suggested that the paper is accepted for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors have answered all my comments and have revised the manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
I appreciate your efforts in addressing the necessary corrections for the manuscript. It is now in a state where the required changes have been implemented. However, I kindly request you to make one minor adjustment: please ensure that the in-text citations are formatted according to the MDPI style.
