Review Reports - Applications of BWM and GRA for Evaluating the Risk of Picking and Material-Handling Accidents in Warehouse Facilities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have collected the critical risks by the relative literatures, interviewees and calculated the weights of four critical indicators (O, S, D, and E) by BWM approach through GRA, HFACS model and FMEA approach.

The findings of the presented study has advanced the research on the mitigation of warehouse accidents. However, following areas are required to be improved in the manuscript.

1. The proposed method needs to be critically reviewed (i.e., compare) with the past investigations and better to benchmark the significance.

2. The limitations of the research study need to be described.

3. Better to describe the cost benefit of the proposed method other than that of the accident prevention.

4. The conclusion needs to be improved to emphasize the industrial importance.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The main contribution consists in identifying and drawing up a list of major accidents with critical risk from the HFACS risk categories and carrying out an empirical analysis of the risks of lifting and material handling accidents in the warehouse facility.

Please find my following observations:

The abstract is a concise summary of the research conducted, results obtained, and conclusions reached.

The manuscript is clear and presented in a structured manner.

The Introduction presents general information about the chosen subject, makes references to previous studies and presents the author’s objectives. Bibliographic references are appropriate to the chosen subject. It also shows how the article is organized.

Please review the text (pg 5): ’’ The steps of BMW are used to derive the weights of the criteria, which are briefly described as follows [17]’’

The authors present the research methodology based on the Best-Worst method (BWM), and Gray Relational Analysis (GRA). Appropriate bibliographic references are made, although there could be more. The experimental design is adequate to test the hypothesis. The results of the manuscript may be reproducible based on the details mentioned in the Research Methodology section, in the specified context (warehouse logistics centre in northern Taiwan).

Chapter 4 presents the Results of the study. A case study is presented in which identification data is mentioned, including the name of the person. The article does not mention the consent to the processing of this data. Anonymized information or the company registration code is not considered personal data.

Pg. 8 ’’After three discussions and revisions...’’ – what do the authors mean by this statement? (’’there are 18 critical risks of picking and materials handling accidents in the warehouse facility’’ )

In the Conclusions section, the authors summarize the results obtained in the empirical analysis and propose a list of 18 critical risks of picking and materials handling accidents in the warehouse facility. The conclusion explains what the research has achieved and these are related to the problem stated in the introduction and mention the importance of the study for risk management.

Half of the cited references are from the last five years.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting study that can provide contributions especially in the logistic practice. However, some issues must be addressed before considering for publication.

1. The adoption of BWM is still unclear. There are many MCDM methods, but the study must apply BWM.

2. To better highlight the significance of BWM, the literature review section should focus more on past related studies. Especially the applications of BWM to non-financial attributes (similar to this work) such as DOI: 10.1109/ECTIDAMTNCON53731.2022.9720385; 10.3390/math8081342

3. The discussion part should focus more on the comparisons with past related studies (advantages, disadvantages, similarities and differences)

4. The limitations of study must be added.

5. The details (qualifications) of experts must be presented to show the reliability of results.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Review report of article applsci-2094157

In brief, the manuscript titled “Applications of BWM and GRA for evaluating the Risk of Picking and Materials Handling Accidents in the Warehouse Facility”

(a) is a potential and exciting work;

(b) proposes a novel MCDM-based FMEA assessment approach;

(d) fits the journal’s scope and standards.

General findings related to the manuscript:

The manuscript deals with an evergreen decision-making problem related to the methodological development of traditional risk assessment based on MCDM techniques. The manuscript is clearly written and refers to the general structure of the state-of-the-art studies of this fuzzy-MCDM risk assessment universe. The rest of the reviewer’s comments focus on the possibility of more significant impacts on the research community. However, there will also be some structural, methodological, and operative comments as well.

The detailed comments following the structure of the paper are presented in the followings:

Section 1 - Introduction section

The introduction section does not identify the scientific novelty of the research. Is the combination of the BWM-GRA-FMEA methods a relevant novelty? If yes, why? What would be different if GRA had been combined with AHP or 0-1 pairwise comparison methods? What would be different if not the old RPN had been calculated, but the PRISM number of O, S, and D or the action priority (AP) had been applied? It is not enough to state in the introduction that FMEA, BMW, and GRA are important MCDM methods without understanding the aim of the research. Please clearly highlight the scientific novelty of the study.

Section 2 - Theoretical background

This section has some weaknesses based on the followings:

2/a

Although the section describes the theoretical basis of the work, there are only 10 references in the section. At least 10-15 references by sub-sections would probably be enough to describe the basics of the state-of-the-art related to the introduced phenomena. Please build this section on significantly more relevant references.

2/b

The structure of the subsections is logical, but one part of the research is missing from the theoretical background: the introduction of the state-of-the-art of MCDM. Please introduce the state of the art of the classic MCDM methods, their combinations, the fuzzy versions, etc. Please review and refer in the text at least to the following books and WOS/SCOPUS articles:

https://doi.org/10.1201/b11032

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(03)00020-1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2014.11.009

https://doi.org/10.1016/0270-0255(87)90473-8

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mcm.2006.03.023

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2022.100815

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2022.109373

https://doi.org/10.3390/w14233851

https://doi.org/10.3390/risks10110213

2/c

Subsection 2.2 – Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

Please address the development of the FMEA method from the beginning to today’s FMEA approaches. Please address the applied FMEA standard by referring to it. Please briefly describe the latest prioritization novelties of FMEA according to the Action Priority (AP) and PRISM number by reviewing and referring in the text to the followings:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2022.103712

https://doi.org/10.3390/math10050676

AIAG; VDA. FMEA Handbook, 1st ed.; Automotive Industry Action Group: Southfield, MI, USA, 2019.

Section 3 – Research methodology

The research methodology section focuses only on the introduction of the quantitative assessment and ranking approach. The most important steps of the qualitative part (for example, the data collection) also should be addressed here briefly.

The quantitative part is correct and nicely done.

Please create a flow chart to describe the proposed process, it would be helpful to some readers in understanding the proposed approach.

Some symbols are missing or wrong in some equations, for example, Eq(6), Eq(7), and in the text. (The transformation of the publisher can cause it, but in the end, address and solve this issue.)

Section 4 – Results

Please rename the section to Case study or something similar. Why this suggestion? Subsection 4.1 is about describing the details of the data collection and the materials, no results are presented here. In a “case study” section the data collection and the results (the results are presented in Subsections 4.2 and 4.3).

Table 4

Table 4 really breaks the dynamics of the text since it is too long. If it is possible, please place it in the appendix. The ID and name of the items would be enough to keep here with the reference to the descriptions in the appendix.

Missing “Discussion”

If the first major problem with the manuscript is the modest literary presentation, the second is the fact that there is no discussion. Please provide a sound discussion by linking the research results to other studies' findings. In light of the literature, what is new/different/the scientific novelty of this work?

7. Missing “limitations” and “future research plans”

There is no dedicated space in the text for the description of the limitations of the proposed methodology and for highlighting the most reasonable future research directions of the research. Please provide these in some paragraphs in the discussion section.

In general:

The reviewer would like to congratulate to the manuscript, it will be a very nice MCDM risk assessment article soon. However, the current form of the manuscript looks quite good. The reviewer encourages the author the revision.

Overall proposal to the Editor:

The manuscript has significant potential; however, the manuscript requires revision. The reviewer suggests major revision to increase the possible future impact and the overall scientific soundness of the article.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Some comments have been still ignored. Please see

1. The adoption of BWM is still unclear. There are many MCDM methods, but the study must apply BWM.

Validation: Done

Validation: Not incorporated, papers have not been added

3. The discussion part should focus more on the comparisons with past related studies (advantages, disadvantages, similarities and differences)

Validation: Partially done, can be improved better than this revision.

4. The limitations of study must be added.

Validation: Done

5. The details (qualifications) of experts must be presented to show the reliability of results.

Validation: Done

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

According to the answer of the author, the reviewer kindly makes no changes to the original review.

Author Response

Please see attached file with visible changes on paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

All my comments have been properly responded. The paper can be now accepted for publication.

Reviewer 4 Report

It is ok.