A Process Decision-Making Method for Planar Machining of Box-Type Components

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors in their study are proposing DM machining process of box-type components. Initially hierarchical DM machining process model is constructed, afterwards DM ontology model for planar machining process of box-type components is developed. In general, topic is at this time of interest, and paper has contribution in the field. However, there are some major concerncs that should be solved:

-A new section should be established "Literature review" with more relevant and up-to-date references. Lack of this chapter, and major references that are omitted are major draw back of this paper. This part should be significantly improved...

-Some main questions are not covered in the Intro section. In the Introduction section there are no info regarding research gap, contribution of the paper and motivation for this research... Why this research is needed, what differs this research from others?

-Abstract is loosely written and should be re-written in a more specific and concise manner. Also, avoid acronyms from the abtract that are not explained...

-Also, one question arises.. Is there any comparison of your model with others?

-After Chapter 5, an in-depth discussion is needed. At this moment and in this form its not satisfactory. 

-Limitations are not mentioned in conclusions.

Overall, significant improvements are needed, in order to be acceptable. 

Author Response

1. -A new section should be established "Literature review" with more relevant and up-to-date references. Lack of this chapter, and major references that are omitted are major draw back of this paper. This part should be significantly improved...

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, section 2, “Related Work”, has been added to summarize some of the literature related to this paper.

2. -Some main questions are not covered in the Intro section. In the Introduction section there are no info regarding research gap, contribution of the paper and motivation for this research... Why this research is needed, what differs this research from others?

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore,  an introduction has been added to provide information on research gaps, contributions and motivation. Research gap: traditional process design relies heavily on empiricalization and process knowledge is difficult to share and transfer (line 36-38, 62-65). Contribution of the paper: to construct an ontology-based knowledge base for box parts, to reduce the uncertainty in the decision-making process of machining process, to improve the efficiency of process design, and to facilitate the communication and sharing of process design information of box parts among designers (line 73-76).

3. -Abstract is loosely written and should be re-written in a more specific and concise manner. Also, avoid acronyms from the abtract that are not explained...

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the abstract has been modified in this paper to make the content more specific.

4. -Also, one question arises.. Is there any comparison of your model with others?

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, section 7, “Discussion”, has been added to the paper, and the model in this paper is compared with other models (ontology-based model for automatic generation of dimensional parameters for shaft parts).

5. -After Chapter 5, an in-depth discussion is needed. At this moment and in this form its not satisfactory. 

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the “Engineering Examples” section has been revised, and Section 7, “Discussion”, has been added to discuss the methodology proposed in this paper and to compare it with other methods.

6. -Limitations are not mentioned in conclusions. 

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the limitations of this paper, which have been modified in the conclusion, are mainly in the study of process decision making for planar machining of case-like parts where the process datum coincides with the design datum during the machining process. (line 624-628)

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper introduces an ontology-based approach for intelligent decision-making in planar machining processes of box-type components. The authors construct a hierarchical model for process decision-making, develop an ontology model using OWL, implement reasoning rules with SWRL, and validate their approach through a case study of a gearbox. The work aims to address challenges in process knowledge sharing among heterogeneous CAPP systems and to reduce intellectual costs in process decision-making.

The paper demonstrates several notable strengths:

The authors effectively identify a relevant problem in manufacturing process planning: the challenge of knowledge sharing and transfer among heterogeneous CAPP systems, which impacts process decision-making efficiency.

The hierarchical model construction (Section 2) is well-conceived, with clear delineation of the four layers (part structure, design features, processing program, and process parameter) that comprehensively represents the relationships in the decision-making process.

The integration of ontology technology with manufacturing process planning is a valuable contribution that shows potential for enhancing semantic interoperability.

The SWRL rules developed for the decision-making process (Section 4.1) are clearly articulated with specific examples that demonstrate their application.

The validation through a case study provides concrete evidence of the method's application in a real-world scenario.

Despite its strengths, the paper exhibits several limitations:

The approach is validated with only a single case study (gearbox). This raises questions about the generalizability of the proposed method across different types of box components with varying complexity.

The paper lacks quantitative metrics to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach compared to traditional methods. How much time or effort is saved? What is the accuracy improvement?

Theoretical Foundation: The paper would benefit from a stronger theoretical justification for the specific ontology structure chosen. Why is this particular hierarchical model optimal?

The assumptions and constraints of the approach are not clearly stated until the conclusion, where the authors mention that the study only considers planar machining and cases where design and positioning references coincide.

There is minimal discussion of potential challenges in implementing this approach in industrial settings, including knowledge acquisition, ontology maintenance, and integration with existing systems.

Based on the analysis above, I recommend Major Revision before the paper can be considered for publication. The core concept is valuable and the approach is promising, but significant improvements are needed in validation, comparative analysis, and addressing the methodological concerns identified above.

The authors should focus particularly on demonstrating the generalizability of their approach through additional case studies and providing quantitative evidence of improvement over traditional methods. With these revisions, the paper has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the field of computer-aided process planning for manufacturing.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The english must be improved

Author Response

1. -The approach is validated with only a single case study (gearbox). This raises questions about the generalizability of the proposed method across different types of box components with varying complexity.

-Thank you for pointing this out. The validation of the method proposed in this paper through a case study (gearbox) is to show the feasibility of the method. The method can be generalized to different types of case-like parts.

2. -The paper lacks quantitative metrics to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach compared to traditional methods. How much time or effort is saved? What is the accuracy improvement?

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore. the following has been added to Section 6.2 “Case Study”: “ …… The results obtained by the reasoning are consistent with the results obtained by the traditional method of consulting relevant international standards and manual calculations. In addition, the time consumption of each stage of the reasoning process is shown in Fig. 9: it takes 963ms to transfer the OWL assertion formula set Abox and SWRL rule base to the rule engine of the ontology, 189ms for the reasoning engine to run the reasoning process, and 12ms for the reasoning result to be converted into OWL language. method has significant advantages in terms of computational efficiency and feasibility. (line 551-561)”

3. -Theoretical Foundation: The paper would benefit from a stronger theoretical justification for the specific ontology structure chosen. Why is this particular hierarchical model optimal?

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore. this paper has been in section 3.2 “machining process decision-making hierarchical information representation model” part of the reasons for the choice of the model has been described: the adjacency matrix model with its simple structure, intuitive and clear, easy to implement and can effectively represent the interrelationship between the levels, has been widely used in the field of machinery manufacturing (line 208-211). The hierarchical information representation model for decision-making of planar machining process of box parts constructed in this paper can describe the decision-making process of planar machining process of parts in an intuitive and clear way.

4. -The assumptions and constraints of the approach are not clearly stated until the conclusion, where the authors mention that the study only considers planar machining and cases where design and positioning references coincide.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore. this paper has been in the “Introduction” part of the assumptions and limitations of the method has been described: to address this issue, this paper focuses on the planar machining of box parts, and in the machining process under the premise of the process benchmarks and design benchmarks overlap, the ontology technology is introduced into the research of the decision-making of planar machining process of box parts (line 65-68).

5. -There is minimal discussion of potential challenges in implementing this approach in industrial settings, including knowledge acquisition, ontology maintenance, and integration with existing systems.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore. relevant content has been added to the text in section 2 “Related work” and section 8 “Conclusion” and section 4.1.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

# The authors are advised to make the title more straightforward. 

# The keywords are generic and do not entail the essentiality of the work. Please set the keywords appropriately.

# The paper's core contribution is to introduce an ontology-based approach as stated in Introduction (lines 60-73). The authors stated "... However, the CAPP systems under-pinning these studies are independent and heterogeneous, making it difficult to share and
transfer relevant process knowledge, thereby reducing the efficiency of process design.
To address these issues, ontology technology is introduced into the research of decision
making for planar machining process of box-type parts. Ontology is a formal explicit spec
ification of a shared conceptual model, offering significant advantages in promoting se
mantic interoperability among heterogeneous systems and enhancing knowledge sharing
and reuse [9–11]. Based on the demand and applications of artificial intelligence, a
knowledge base for box-type component parts is constructed using ontologies. This pro-
vides a convenient information exchange platform for process design of box-type compo- 
nents, enabling designers to easily communicate and share process design information. It
facilitates the intelligent decision-making of planar machining processes for box-type
parts, thereby enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of process planning. " 

However, there is no introduction or a separate section about ontology. how ontology is being applied in the domain of manufacturing as well as machining. How it has been evolved. With the evolution of web 1.0, web 2.0, in the paradigm of Industry 4 and onwards, ontology has evolved and been used and also criticized. The semantics, interpretability, and handling of diversity (in other words, flexibility and scalability) are the core issues here as well. These are not discussed properly yet. The authors must work on this to discuss. If needed, they might think of a preliminary section where they can bring out these studies and discuss. Without this, the scope of this study is not clear and questionable. This section should also clearly indicate the rationale behind choosing OWL and the associated reasoner SWRL over other approaches. A scientific article must explain the literature, scopes, limitations, and objectives clearly and explicitly.

# The authors are advised to add a conceptual diagram (in Introduction) to highlight the context of the study for the readers. Explaining the context with a proper schematic will enhance the understanding of the readers as well as the explainability of this work's contribution. 

# While explaining components underlying Figure 1 in subsections, please include the used notions and symbols as well what the authors showed in the Figure 1. Also, the authors should refer to Figure 1 while explaining these subsections so that readers can connect easily and go back to the Figure to see it whenever needed while reading the subsections.

# Figure 2 needs much more explanation in Section 2.2. The terms are highly technical and important in the process. These deserve an explanation for general readers. 

# The above comment is true for the rest of the paper, where technical issues in tables or figures, or equations have remained unexplained properly. The authors are advised to check and correct accordingly.

# The modeling, reasoning, and case study section is well-explained in terms of results. However, the claims made in these sections and the conclusion are not justified yet. Like the talk about semantic issues. How exactly the semantic issue is solved or tried to be solved compared to other studies is not explicitly coming out. It seems the authors are not confident enough about this. This should be expressed more clearly. Also, the limitations of the study are not well discussed. What are the challenges authors faced, what are the important areas to further think about etc. Or, does the author think the work is full-proof and no further investigations are needed? The authors also said " engineering semantic issues of process design that rely on human interpretation" (line 386). It is not clear what the authors are saying. Does this mean the authors think this is a problem and they think about more automation. Or they think they need to support human rationale more. Please clarify this in writing. The point is the new era of smart manufacturing / Industry 5 is all about human-in-the-loop. So, it is important to address this clearly. 

# The authors also said "knowledge representation". Understandably, ontology is used for representation. The question is, what type of knowledge? From the viewpoint of Epistemology, there are many definitions of knowledge and its types (analytic a priori, synthetic a priori, and synthetic a posterior; definitive, deductive, inductive, creative, and abductive). The authors are advised to categorize the available knowledge types in their work based on the definitions available in the literature and then talk about their representations using ontology modeling. This can be done in a different section. This will make the work more engaging with the field. Right now, the description seems like a project work rather than a scientific article.

# There is no easy way to understand "Planar Machining Process of Box-Type Components" easily for a reader. The authors are advised to add a schematic to show the whole workflow interconnected so that the general readers understand what is this process and in each part what are the important components. This is totally missing right now, although the authors are emphasizing this is a very important process. 

# The referencing is so poor. Since the essential discussion regarding ontology, semantics, knowledge, and the related works are missing, the references do not give a solid foundation for the work so far.

 

Author Response

1. -The authors are advised to make the title more straightforward. 

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the title of this article has been changed to “A Process Decision-Making Method for Planar Machining of Box-Type components”

2. -The keywords are generic and do not entail the essentiality of the work. Please set the keywords appropriately.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the keywords of this paper have been changed to “Ontology; Box-Type components; Planar Machining; Process Parameters”. (line 27)

3. -However, there is no introduction or a separate section about ontology. how ontology is being applied in the domain of manufacturing as well as machining. How it has been evolved. With the evolution of web 1.0, web 2.0, in the paradigm of Industry 4 and onwards, ontology has evolved and been used and also criticized. The semantics, interpretability, and handling of diversity (in other words, flexibility and scalability) are the core issues here as well. These are not discussed properly yet. The authors must work on this to discuss. If needed, they might think of a preliminary section where they can bring out these studies and discuss. Without this, the scope of this study is not clear and questionable. This section should also clearly indicate the rationale behind choosing OWL and the associated reasoner SWRL over other approaches. A scientific article must explain the literature, scopes, limitations, and objectives clearly and explicitly.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, section 2, “Related Work”, has been added to the paper, which discusses the evolution of ontology, areas of application, and related research. The choice between OWL and SWRL is also compared and discussed.

4. -The authors are advised to add a conceptual diagram (in Introduction) to highlight the context of the study for the readers. Explaining the context with a proper schematic will enhance the understanding of the readers as well as the explainability of this work's contribution. While explaining components underlying Figure 1 in subsections, please include the used notions and symbols as well what the authors showed in the Figure 1. Also, the authors should refer to Figure 1 while explaining these subsections so that readers can connect easily and go back to the Figure to see it whenever needed while reading the subsections. Figure 2 needs much more explanation in Section 2.2. The terms are highly technical and important in the process. These deserve an explanation for general readers. The above comment is true for the rest of the paper, where technical issues in tables or figures, or equations have remained unexplained properly. The authors are advised to check and correct accordingly.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the tables or graphs or equations have been explained in this paper. For example, Table 1 has been added with comments below; the terms in Figure 3 have been explained ...... (line 192-206, 219-222, 245-265……)

5. -The modeling, reasoning, and case study section is well-explained in terms of results. However, the claims made in these sections and the conclusion are not justified yet. Like the talk about semantic issues. How exactly the semantic issue is solved or tried to be solved compared to other studies is not explicitly coming out. It seems the authors are not confident enough about this. This should be expressed more clearly. Also, the limitations of the study are not well discussed. What are the challenges authors faced, what are the important areas to further think about etc. Or, does the author think the work is full-proof and no further investigations are needed? The authors also said " engineering semantic issues of process design that rely on human interpretation" (line 386). It is not clear what the authors are saying. Does this mean the authors think this is a problem and they think about more automation. Or they think they need to support human rationale more. Please clarify this in writing. The point is the new era of smart manufacturing / Industry 5 is all about human-in-the-loop. So, it is important to address this clearly. 

-

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, changes have been made to the relevant parts of this paper. For example, for the semantic problem in the field of process design, as the traditional process design mainly relies on the experience of designers and related design manuals, resulting in process knowledge is difficult to share and transfer (line 36-38, 62-65). Through the proposed method in this paper, reduces the difficulty of design information and related process knowledge to be read, understood and interpreted by computers, and helps to change the form of storage and exchange of part process design information and related process knowledge among CAX systems, thus facilitating the process design of parts and related process knowledge to be stored and exchanged. It helps to change the form of storage and exchange of part process design information and related process knowledge among CAX systems, thus promoting the sharing and transfer of part process design information and related process knowledge among heterogeneous CAX systems (line 613-623). The limitations of this paper have been discussed in the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” sections (line 65-68, 624-628).

6. -The authors also said "knowledge representation". Understandably, ontology is used for representation. The question is, what type of knowledge? From the viewpoint of Epistemology, there are many definitions of knowledge and its types (analytic a priori, synthetic a priori, and synthetic a posterior; definitive, deductive, inductive, creative, and abductive). The authors are advised to categorize the available knowledge types in their work based on the definitions available in the literature and then talk about their representations using ontology modeling. This can be done in a different section. This will make the work more engaging with the field. Right now, the description seems like a project work rather than a scientific article.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the term “domain knowledge” has been explained in the paper. Based on related books and literature, the domain knowledge under study is partially described in Section 4.1 and Section 5.

7. -There is no easy way to understand "Planar Machining Process of Box-Type Components" easily for a reader. The authors are advised to add a schematic to show the whole workflow interconnected so that the general readers understand what is this process and in each part what are the important components. This is totally missing right now, although the authors are emphasizing this is a very important process. 

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the decision making process for the planar machining of box-like parts has been explained in Section 3.1 (line 192-206) and a schematic diagram (Fig. 2) has been added.

8. -The referencing is so poor. Since the essential discussion regarding ontology, semantics, knowledge, and the related works are missing, the references do not give a solid foundation for the work so far.

-Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, the paper has been enriched by adding relevant references and discussing the objects covered in the paper.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for improving the paper by incorporating the suggestions.

Author Response

We also appreciate your many useful comments on this article.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for addressing the previous comments.

The authors are advised to correct some minor issues as follows.

# Some figures look dirty (e.g., Figures 1 & 2). Excessive use of color and broken words might be the reasons behind this. Please prepare the figures more professionally.

# Figure 12 is hard to see. Please make it large and clear to enhance readability.

# Please work on the typos throughout the manuscript. For example, Figure 3. Here, the "f" of the "fabrication" is written using a small letter. The way "m=1, 2, 3, ..." is written on the note is also incorrect regarding scientific writing. It must be like this "m = 1,2,...". Please check the typos thoroughly. 

 

Author Response

1.-Some figures look dirty (e.g., Figures 1 & 2). Excessive use of color and broken words might be the reasons behind this. Please prepare the figures more professionally.

- Thank you for pointing this out. we agree with this comment, Therefore, we've made changes to this article to make the diagram neater.

2. -Figure 12 is hard to see. Please make it large and clear to enhance readability.

-Thank you for pointing this out. we agree with this comment, Therefore, we have increased the size of Figure 12 to make the figure look clearer.

3. -Please work on the typos throughout the manuscript. For example, Figure 3. Here, the "f" of the "fabrication" is written using a small letter. The way "m=1, 2, 3, ..." is written on the note is also incorrect regarding scientific writing. It must be like this "m = 1,2,...". Please check the typos thoroughly. 

-Thank you for pointing this out. we agree with this comment, Therefore, in accordance with your suggestion, we have made changes to the corresponding parts of the article to make it more standardized. For example, Figure 3, "f₁,  f_m" and " f_m—plane being machined (m=1, 2, 3, ···); "