Techno-Economic Evaluation of 5G Technology for Automated Guided Vehicles in Production
, Leonhard Henke 3, Alexander Mann 1, Florian Renneberg 3, Volker Stich 3 and Robert H. Schmitt 1,2
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
See attachment
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
To whom it may concern,
first of all I wish you a great start in the new year!
Thank you very much for your valuable feedback. Please find attached my answers to your remarks - all of them are addressed in the revised document.
In case not everything was addressed, please reach out to me anytime!
Best regards!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors provide a techno-economic analysis of employing a 5G – enabled network control systems for Automated Guided Vehicles, compared to 4G technology, in terms of Net Present Value, Return on Investment (RoI), mobility, productivity and safety of the AGVs. The paper is well – structured, but it could be further enhanced in the following ways:
- There are some grammatical errors in the manuscript, for example “… addressed to to achieve the promised…”. The authors are advised to review their manuscript and ensure that they are corrected.
- It is not clear how the results presented in Section 4 are calculated. The authors are advised to provide some calculations as an example, especially regarding the values used, for example to calculate the ΔRoI.
- State-of-the-art works have to be enhanced with relevant works, such as: Giuseppa Caruso, Francesco Nucci, Oscar Prieto Gordo, Stamatia Rizou, Jacques Magen, George Agapiou, Panagiotis Trakadas, "Embedding 5G solutions enabling new business scenarios in Media and Entertainment Industry", Proceedings of the IEEE 2nd 5G World Forum (5GWF), 2019, pp. 460-464.
Author Response
To whom it may concern,
first of all I wish you a great start in the new year!
Thank you very much for your valuable feedback. Please find attached my answers to your remarks - all of them are addressed in the revised document.
In case not everything was addressed, please reach out to me anytime!
Best regards!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
ID: electronics-1523869-peer-review-v1
Title: Techno-Economic Evaluation of 5G Technology for Automated Guided Vehicles in Production
The focus of the paper is on the influence of 5G on an AGV use case based on a five-step evaluation model. The analysis is conducted based on the Digital Experience Factory in Germany to show that difference of NPV between 4G and 5G is 1.3 M€ for a 10-year period, RoI is 66%, mobility is 13%, productivity is 20% and safety is 136 %.
In general, the paper has a good quality. The topic can be interest of either of AGV, machinery, drone and robot researchers. However, I have some comments about organization and content of the paper. Please see the following comments:
- My main concern is about the methodology of the paper. I think authors should mention their contribution in a clearer manner, especially in the abstract of the paper. Currently, they reported some percentages about productivity, safety, etc. However, I think they should say what is their own contribution in study of the 5G technology. Is it something about the methodology, experimental study, or something else.
More importantly, the paper is currently very industry based and suitable for an industry report, but I believe it should become more like a research paper. Terms such as “KPI”, “use case” and “Q2/2022” in Table 1, Table 3 and Conclusion Section, respectively, should be replaced (or removed) with a word more understandable for researchers. As I know, a research paper is different with, for example, prototyping of products in industry projects.
- Another concern is about the level of information presented in figures. Some figures really have nothing to say. For example, Figure 5 only list 5 elements, which are explained in Sections 3.1 to 3.5 later on. Then, I wonder why it should stand as a figure when it has nothing specific to present to readers? It is important to give more information in this figure. If impossible, then it is better to remove it.
- The texts in figures are mostly disordered. For example, “M ap serv er”, “Fleetm anager”, “G atew ay”, “N av igation” and “W hlles” in Figure 1, or “A pp lication Sp ecification”, “5G -D eploym ent G oalSelection”, “5G -C on trolTask Seclection” and “D ata En try” in Figure 2.
-In paper writing, the caption for a figure should appear below the graphic, whereas it should be above for a table. It is easy to get this wrong accidentally as I, for example, see in Figure 8 where the caption of each subfigure should also be under the corresponding subfigure.
-I can see inconsistency in this paper. For example, words such as “Equation”, “Figure” and “Table” are sometimes italicized in the paper and sometimes not.
- It is mentioned that the technology is applicable to robots and drones. However, I suggest briefly citing some general papers of robots and drones in logistics to let readers know about variety of the potential applications. [a] Potentialities of drones and ground autonomous delivery devices for last-mile logistics, Transportation Research Part E, vol. 149, 102325 [b] A transformation technique for the clustered generalized traveling salesman problem with applications to logistics, European Journal of Operational Research 285 (2), 444-457 [c] A vehicle routing problem with movement synchronization of drones, sidewalk robots, or foot-walkers, Transportation Research Procedia vol 46, pp. 29-36
- Finally, I think the paper benefits from a proofreading.
- Other errors:
Keywords: 5G Use Cases in Smart Production --> Smart Production
Keywords: AGV --> Autonomous Guided Vehicle
Page 1: addressed to to achieve --> addressed to achieve
Page 1: such as forklifts., e.g., in the areas --> such as forklifts in the areas
Page 2: in Aachen Section 5 discusses --> in Aachen. Section 5 discusses
Page 2: Section 4, before Section 6 summarizes --> Section 4. Finally, Section 6 summarizes
Page 2: as Figure 1 shows. --> as shown in Figure 1.
Page 4: As described in chapter 2.1 --> As described in Section 2.1
Page 5: analyzed in chapter 2.4 --> analyzed in Section 2.4
Page 6: the next chapters of the paper --> the next section of the paper
Author Response
To whom it may concern,
first of all I wish you a great start in the new year!
Thank you very much for your valuable feedback. Please find attached my answers to your remarks - all of them are addressed in the revised document.
In case not everything was addressed, please reach out to me anytime!
Best regards!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
- Annotations of the figure 6 need to be refined！！！
- Does the use of numerous ICONS in manuscripts involve copyright and interest issues?
- The use of a large number of English words is not prominent and bright enough.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I have read the paper once more, but breifly this time. I have no more concern about the paper. The AGV in production is well covered now.
So, the paper can be accepted as it is.
Author Response
To whom it may concern,
thanks a lot for your positive feedback - we very much appreciate this!
Have a great start in the year!
