A Novel Two-Stage Methodological Approach for Storage Technology Selection: An Engineering–FAHP–WASPAS Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this research, a novel methodology is proposed for Storage Technology Selection. There are concerns related to the motivation, novelty, and methodology of this research. The authors should address the following concerns.

1.      I encourage you to add more detail about your findings in the abstract. Abstract has five-section and you should follow the best practices in your area!

2.      The authors have cited the issue of storage technology selection as not properly addressed based on this single sentence "Gu et al [3] state that the problem of storage technology selection has not been properly treated.", whereas this resource is for 2010!

3.      Some sentences are not scientifically expressed such as "According to the author, ...".

4.      What do the authors mean by expediency? "Here, for expedient reasons, the analysis included only some characteristic papers [24-29]". This is scientific research. The reasons for everything must be scientifically stated.

5.      What is the main reason for selecting the FAHP? In the literature review, it is mentioned that the AHP method was used. However, there are new methods with the same structure as AHP. Also, different types of fuzzy sets have been introduced so far. Why is FAHP chosen?

6.      In this manuscript, it is claimed that the FAHP method was used. While equations (1) to (11) are related to the AHP method and fuzzy is not considered.

7.      If we assume that the weights of the criteria are obtained with FAHP, why fuzzy sets are not used in the WASPAS method?

Author Response

Dear reviewer thank you very much for the helpful suggestions. The paper will be much better with them. We tried to comply with all your suggestions.

In this research, a novel methodology is proposed for Storage Technology Selection. There are concerns related to the motivation, novelty, and methodology of this research. The authors should address the following concerns.

1. I encourage you to add more detail about your findings in the abstract. Abstract has five-section and you should follow the best practices in your area!

Thank you for your helpful comment. The abstract has been improved in accordance with the suggestions.

2. The authors have cited the issue of storage technology selection as not properly addressed based on this single sentence "Gu et al [3] state that the problem of storage technology selection has not been properly treated.", whereas this resource is for 2010!

Thank you for your helpful comment. Gu (2010) states: ’’There are two fundamental issues for equipment selection: (1) how to identify the equipment alternatives that are reasonable for a given storage/retrieval requirement; and (2) how to select among the reasonable alternatives.A very significant contribution would be to develop a method for characterizing requirements and characterizing equipment in such a way that these two issues could be addressed in a unified manner’’. Based on the research literature from the later period, i.e., from 2010 to 2023, the same conclusion can be reached.

3. Some sentences are not scientifically expressed such as "According to the author, ...".

Thank you for your helpful comment. The paper has been improved in accordance with the suggestions.

4. What do the authors mean by expediency? "Here, for expedient reasons, the analysis included only some characteristic papers [24-29]". This is scientific research. The reasons for everything must be scientifically stated.

Thank you for your helpful comment. In this context, only papers that concern the field of storage technology selection and take place in the context of storage design are accepted. They are considered because the storage technology selection is unthinkable without the picking technology selection and material handling technology selection. For these reasons, only some of the papers from this area were taken.

5. What is the main reason for selecting the FAHP? In the literature review, it is mentioned that the AHP method was used. However, there are new methods with the same structure as AHP. Also, different types of fuzzy sets have been introduced so far. Why is FAHP chosen?

Thank you for your helpful comment. The FAHP method was applied due to the nature of the problem. Namely, the problem can be structured on several levels, which are covered by the AHP method, and the fuzzy sets were chosen due to the presence of qualitative criteria whose values are not completely precise. It is explained in more detail in the paper itself.

6. In this manuscript, it is claimed that the FAHP method was used. While equations (1) to (11) are related to the AHP method and fuzzy is not considered.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The formulation is in accordance with the papers:

-Wang, Y.M.; Chin, K.S. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process: A logarithmic fuzzy preference programming methodology. J. Approx. Reason. 2011, 52, 541–553.

-Tadić, S., Krstić, M., Dabić-Miletić, S., & Božić, M. (2023). Smart Material Handling Solutions for City Logistics Systems. Sustainability, 15(8), 6693.

7. If we assume that the weights of the criteria are obtained with FAHP, why fuzzy sets are not used in the WASPAS method?

The ranking of the variants was carried out on the basis of crisp values, so there was no need to consider fuzzy sets, in contrast to determining the weights of the criteria, which were partly of a qualitative nature.

Reviewer 2 Report

This study combined FAHP-WASPAS for storage technology selection. The topic is useful for the readers of the journal. However, the following comments must be applied to the manuscript:

-       The abstract could be organized much better. The author should mention why their results are significant compared to other existing studies.

-       In the introduction section. It is better to mention the contribution one by one. Also, the research gap should be clearly mentioned.

-       There are several long paragraphs in the literature review section. For example, from Lines 142 to 179. The authors should avoid writing long paragraphs which are hard to follow for the readers.

-       In Section 3, the quality of Figure 1 should be improved.

-       In Section 3, the authors should discuss recent developments in the MADM context as follows: (1) “Ordinal Priority Approach (OPA) in Multiple Attribute Decision-Making”; (2)“Blockchain and supply chain finance for sustainable construction industry: ensemble ranking using Ordinal Priority Approach”; (3)“Large-Scale Group Decision-Making (LSGDM) for Performance Measurement of Healthcare Construction Projects: Ordinal Priority Approach”; (4) Performance measurement of construction suppliers under localization, agility, and digitalization criteria: Fuzzy Ordinal Priority Approach”. Please mention them appropriately.

-       I can see there is no sensitivity regarding the final ranks of the MCDM methods. Is there any specific reason? Please explain.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your comments. We hope that we have respected them all and provided answers to the questions raised.

This study combined FAHP-WASPAS for storage technology selection. The topic is useful for the readers of the journal. However, the following comments must be applied to the manuscript:

-  The abstract could be organized much better. The author should mention why their results are significant compared to other existing studies.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The abstract has been improved in accordance with the suggestions.

 -  In the introduction section. It is better to mention the contribution one by one. Also, the research gap should be clearly mentioned.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The paper has been improved in accordance with the suggestions: The contributions of this paper are evident. The approach is based on an engineering procedure, which enables its wide use in practice. In previous papers, only parts of the task were treated; that is, the problem was not comprehensively solved. In addition to the above, the approach can also be applied to solve similar problems in this area.

-There are several long paragraphs in the literature review section. For example, from Lines 142 to 179. The authors should avoid writing long paragraphs which are hard to follow for the readers.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The paper has been improved in accordance with the suggestions.

- In Section 3, the quality of Figure 1 should be improved.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The paper has been improved in accordance with the suggestions.

-       In Section 3, the authors should discuss recent developments in the MADM context as follows: (1) “Ordinal Priority Approach (OPA) in Multiple Attribute Decision-Making”; (2)“Blockchain and supply chain finance for sustainable construction industry: ensemble ranking using Ordinal Priority Approach”; (3)“Large-Scale Group Decision-Making (LSGDM) for Performance Measurement of Healthcare Construction Projects: Ordinal Priority Approach”; (4) Performance measurement of construction suppliers under localization, agility, and digitalization criteria: Fuzzy Ordinal Priority Approach”. Please mention them appropriately.

Thank you for your helpful comment. First of all, an overview of relevant papers is given in Section 2, while the methodological approach is developed in Section 3. The proposed suggestion is not directly related to the observed problem. The paper comments on the papers that are directly related to the problem or start/touch the observed problem in some segment.

- I can see there is no sensitivity regarding the final ranks of the MCDM methods. Is there any specific reason? Please explain.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The obtained solutions are stable, that is, there is no change in rank in the sensitivity analysis. This directly means that the applied methodology is good and can be used in theory and practice.

It says in the paper: hanges in the value of the parameter λ do not affect the obtained solution. The applied approach proved to be effective in this example.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents a methodology for selection of the storage technology by using multi-criteria decision making. This is a niche area of research, and there are not many researchers that understand complexity of warehouse design problem and try to solve problems associated with that.

The paper offers a innovative and theory-based methodological approach for a selection of storage technology, and illustrate practicality of this approach. In that light, I have two minor remarks for a further improvement of the paper:

- one more round of the proof reading and editing the paper to synchronise the terminology - in for example, in one place word 'article' is used, in other places 'items', 'goods', 'units' or 'products'. For non-expert readers, that might appear confusing.

- I think the paper can be a bit more interesting for practitioners if authors explain where data for testing of the methodology comes from? For example, how are characteristics of different tasks evaluated (Table 2) to high, small and medium? What are assumptions behind the standard warehouse layout? What data exactly is based on the expert judgements and what data is based on the previous literature. This information could benefit practitioners and academics who would like to apply this methodology or improve it further.

Overall, well done!

Author Response

Dear reviewer thank you very much for the helpful and friendly suggestions/comments. The paper will be much better with them.

The paper presents a methodology for selection of the storage technology by using multi-criteria decision making. This is a niche area of research, and there are not many researchers that understand complexity of warehouse design problem and try to solve problems associated with that.

The paper offers a innovative and theory-based methodological approach for a selection of storage technology, and illustrate practicality of this approach. In that light, I have two minor remarks for a further improvement of the paper:

- one more round of the proof reading and editing the paper to synchronise the terminology - in for example, in one place word 'article' is used, in other places 'items', 'goods', 'units' or 'products'. For non-expert readers, that might appear confusing.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The paper has been improved in accordance with the suggestions.

- I think the paper can be a bit more interesting for practitioners if authors explain where data for testing of the methodology comes from? For example, how are characteristics of different tasks evaluated (Table 2) to high, small and medium? What are assumptions behind the standard warehouse layout? What data exactly is based on the expert judgements and what data is based on the previous literature. This information could benefit practitioners and academics who would like to apply this methodology or improve it further.

Thank you for your helpful comment. The data given in Table 2 were obtained by looking at the task. The given sizes do not have crisp values but are obtained based on the estimation of the designer or experts in this field. The following paragraphs was added to the paper: ’’The standard warehouse layout represents a warehouse that forms one block; that is, there are cross aisles only at the ends of the block. There are aisles between them.’’ In the paper, all qualitative criteria were assessed by a group of twenty experts. The values of most criteria can be found in the literature. Those values can be used for some rough analysis. For a specific task, designers should evaluate the selected criteria themselves.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately, the authors have not been able to provide a proper scientific answer to comments 2, 5, and 7:

- The motivation and innovation of this research are limited.

- No comparative explanation is given for different fuzzy sets for AHP. The reasons for the superiority of the chosen methods are not fully explained. The authors have dealt with these issues superficially and have not considered their importance.

- In comment 6, it is mentioned that the fuzzy version of the equations should be included. By citing two sources, the authors have indicated that the equations correspond to those articles. What is the purpose of research? Is it to teach correct principles to future generations or to copy equations without evaluating their correctness? Please take a look at equation (3). Is this equation related to fuzzy sets? Errors can occur in any article. There are thousands of articles from reputable journals that have established the fuzzy nature of fuzzy AHP equations. The authors' resistance to correcting the equations is incomprehensible to me.

- As for comment 7, as can be seen in Table 3, there are qualitative evaluations for the WASPAS initial matrix. The authors have mentioned that because the criteria were somewhat qualitative in nature, fuzzy sets were used. However, qualitative evaluations are also seen in the ranking criteria. Despite this, the authors have decided to use crisp numbers!

Author Response

The reviewer does not know the issues in this paper. It proves the persistence of insisting on the wrong things. The accuracy of the setting of the  Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process method is confirmed by the original paper: Wang, Y. M., & Chin, K. S. (2011). Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process: A logarithmic fuzzy preference programming methodology. International journal of approximate reasoning, 52(4), 541-553. (It is recommended that you read the same.) For this reason, we believe that no changes are needed in the paper.
Regarding the last comment, the answer was given in the last round. All values used for the WASPAS method had a crisp value.

Reviewer 2 Report

no comment

Author Response

Thank you for the accepted corrections.