Skills Requirements for the European Machine Tool Sector Emerging from Its Digitalization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In their paper "Skill Requirements for the European Machine Tool sector arising with the Digitalization of Industry" the authors present a framework for identifying and presenting a set of skills which will become more and more important in the digital future of the European machine tool sector.

From a conceptual point of view, it should be stated in the paper, that the authors follow the reskilling/upskilling paradigm regarding future work skills for digitalization / industry 4.0. There is substantial work related to this topic done by acatech (e.g. see https://www.acatech.de/publikation/kompetenzen-fuer-industrie-4-0-qualifizierungsbedarfe-und-loesungsansaetze/download-pdf?lang=en_excerpt for the short management summary version of a bigger study performed by acatech) in Germany, which should be at least referred to, when writing about future changes of industrial work based on advances in digitalization. 

For the creation of the database of required skills, the authors well describe the list of data sources, but a detailled description of how the skills were extracted from the job profiles is missing. Especially it is very important to identify any synonyms and similar terms to have only a limited set of required skills, and not a very long and not really usable list, as presented in the tables shown in the end of the paper. Also it is not very clear to me, how the auhors differentitate between essential and optional future skills. Is this a manual process or done automatically?

In general, I think the paper is really nice and tackles a very relevant area of digitalization in the industrial sector. If the limitations described above are addressed accordingly, then it can really be a feasible starting point for both industrial companies as well as public or private educational institutions, which could potentially use the paper as basis for the definition of future educational curricula. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your valuable time.

We are grateful for your constructive comments, criticism and recommendations which leaded us to analyze our paper more properly. We have done our best to address them all. In the end, we believe that, the paper has substantially improved. Below, in the attache document, we provide point-by-point responses to your comments.

The modified or newly added parts are also highlighted in the paper.

Kind regards,

Tugce Akyazi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review an interesting and certainly needed text in today's industry 4.0. I'm posting some comments below:

1. In the introduction, you describe that the machine tool sector is one of the most important subsystems of the metal industry managing, but on line 112 you negate it a bit. I recommend quantifying and describing in detail what this means.

2. You highlight the very advantages of Industry 4.0, but there are certainly also negatives (or obstacles), I recommend paying attention to those as well. For SMEs, the implementation of industry may be 4.0. a great burden and the same applies to workers who are and will be subject to great demands.

3. There is a uniform text in the research, I recommend separating the main topics: industry 4.0., Machine tools in relation to industry 4.0 and the issue of workers and their requirements.

4. There is no clearly defined goal in the methodology, I found it in the chapter below (lines 281 - 287).

5. In the presented table 2 it would be possible to distinguish in color how the current and new requirements differ from each other. E.g. green would be what is the same and red, where retraining will be needed in the future.

6. There is a complete lack of discussion, the view of other authors, or how it is now addressed.

It would also be appropriate to state how the companies themselves view this, which should implement this and not just the unions.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for your valuable time.

We are grateful for your constructive comments, criticism and recommendations which leaded us to analyze our paper more properly. We have done our best to address them all. In the end, we believe that, the paper has substantially improved. Below, in the attached document, we provide point-by-point responses to your comments.

The modified or newly added parts are also highlighted in the paper.

Sincerely,

Tugce Akyazi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors improved their paper based on the two reviews, including an overall restructuring of the paper making it much easier to read. Also the update of the related work section is a great improvement of the paper. In my opinion, it therefore can be accepted in its current version.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the adjustments and clarifications