Possibilities to Increase Assembly Line Productivity Using Different Management Approaches

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

My general remark for this paper is lack of scientific approach. When you apply known methods to known problem, there is no science in it. Therefore, the authors need to improve Literature review and clearly say why their approach is different from approaches in literature review.

Some of the equations use for calculation are not clear. Please, see comments in attachment.

At the end, authors present multi-criteria problem, but they are not using any multi-criteria method to solve it. Yet, they provide ranking of variants, but how did they calculate this rank? Some multi-criteria method must be used here.

To conclude, I like the presented case study, it is always valuable to see real industrial case study. However, paper requires major revision. It must be based on scientific methods.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for you review and for all your suggestions how to improve quality of the article.  We appreciate your comments and we implemented them into the updated version of the article. The majority of article was reworked:

• Introduction and Literature review were fully reworked and connected in one chapter “Introduction”, the aim and purpose of the research were clearly defined.
• The mentioned equation was explained in the text and in Figure 2.
• The reasoning of our decision of not using multi-criteria method is explained in Discussion chapter (page 15).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

First of all I would like to congratulate you for taking up such an interesting topic, I am pleased to be a reviewer of your work. Presented research is very interesting, however the form of the article in my opinion still needs improvement. Here are my detailed comments:

Abstract - needs to be rewritten, is not in compliance with journal requirements. Lacks description of the method, results, conclusion. Please note that you can use max. 250 words.

Introduction - what is missing here is the identification and description of the research gap, a clearly stated purpose of the article and a description of the unique scientific contributions of the authors, and a paragraph synthesizing the different parts of the article (what methodological order of the paper was adopted).

Literature review - is very poor does not provide adequate background for the study. Needs to be greatly expanded/complemented

Materials and methods - in this section I only see results, where is the study description? When, where, how - was it conducted. What was the purpose of the study, hypothesis, research assumptions, research questions. Please remember that there is research rigor in scientific papers. So there is already a results section, but the materials and methods section is missing.

The discussion is summary in nature, lacking the academic discussion of contrasting the findings with other work that has already been done in this or similar areas.

In conclusion, identify: limitations of the research, its scalability, its usefulness to business practitioners and other researchers, future research directions.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for you review and for all your suggestions how to improve quality of the article.  We appreciate your comments and we implemented them into the updated version of the article. The majority of article was reworked:

• Abstract was reworked according to comments and shortened to fit into 250 words maximum.
• Introduction and Literature review were fully reworked and connected in one chapter “Introduction”.
• Materials and methods chapter, Discussion chapter and Conclusion chapter were reworked according to your suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

It is recommended to publish in the Journal.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper deals with a topic that has long been discussed in literature and needs extensive rewriting in order to highlight the originality and significance of research.

Some major revisions are needed in order to overcome several shorcomings:

• The paper is too long, the research carried on could be described more synthetically and more effectively;
• The English form needs major revisions;
• The titol could be rewritten so as to give a more precise idea of the paper's contents;
• The originality of the work should be much more highlighted in the whole document, starting with the abstract;
• The abstract should contain a more precise indication of results obtained (what benefits were brought by the application of the methodology? can you quantify them?);
• Figures should be revised in order to be more effective and they should carry more information (e.g. figure 1);
• The literature review should be more thorough and should be also rewritten in order to highlight the originality of the proposed work. It is now a general history of the topic, while it should indicate similar papers, highlight research gaps and how the presented work aims at filling them;
• The methodology section should give more information on the methodology applied. It is clear what indexes were calculated and how, but how were they selected? why? and how did the optimization and solution selection part work?
• There are several assumptions, especially referred to costs, that should be discussed in details;
• The results section could be improved by presenting a scheme of all the solutions identified ranking them and quantifying costs and benefits (also in terms of PBT for example);
• The conclusion section should be more focused on the methodology rather than on the case study: was the methodology successfully applied? Did it show potential for replicability?

Author Response

Thank you very much for you review and for all your suggestions how to improve quality of the article.  We appreciate your comments and we implemented them into the updated version of the article. The majority of article was reworked:

• Significance of research was highlighted.
• Article was shortened from 20 to 18 pages.
• English was reviewed.
• The name of the article was adjusted.
• Abstract was reworked base on your comments.
• Figure 1 was deleted from the initial version of the article.
• Introduction and Literature review were fully reworked and connected in one chapter “Introduction”.
• The methodology section was also reworked.
• In the results chapter, we focused only on the cost of the assembly process.
• In the conclusion section, the methodology was successfully applied in small business.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors accepted all my remarks and suggestions.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the rating. In the updated version of the article, we made improvements in the evaluated areas "can be improved".

Reviewer 2 Report

The response to the review prepared by the authors left me confused.

The authors did not follow many of my suggestions, such as the method section is not revised, the research gap is not identified, the literature review is not expanded (the paper is based on only 32 literature items), etc. Therefore, I suggest you go back to my first review and once again conscientiously improve the paper. Additionally, I expect your response to the review indicating the changes that have been made. And if any have not been made then describe why.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for you review and for all your suggestions how to improve quality of the article.  We appreciate your comments and we implemented them into the updated version of the article.

The modifications in the article are following:

• Research gap = determination of costs to resources, such as labor and machines / robots. The costs determined in this way represent a real starting point for the decision-making process of choosing the optimal variant.
• The literature review was extended from 32 to 43 sources.
• Chapter 2.2 was elaborated in more details. It includes monitored criteria, their characteristics and relationships for their calculation.
• The results are more clearly presented by removing the calculation of mathematical relationships for the hourly rate line.
• The discussion was adjusted, and comments were added.
• The conclusion was extended with reasoning why small businesses should apply scientific methods to assembly processes.

Reviewer 4 Report

The reviewer appreciates the effort made by the authors to review their manuscript. Nevertheless, there are still shortcomings to be eliminated:

• The english form is still very poor, please revise it carefully;
• The title might still be improved;
• The aim of the sudy is much clearer now (to apply a methodology that has so far been applied to large companies to a small company and to demonstrate it still brings value); nevertheless, the authors state in the introduction that this kind of methodologies is used only in bigger eneterprises without supporting it with data or with relevant references (and as it is a fundamental base for the entire work it should really be supported in some stronger way than only referring to the authors' experience) and in the conclusions it seems that authors imply that since the methodology has been successfully applied to one small company then it is suitable for all small companies. This should be further explained/validated: what are difficulties of small companies in applying this methodology? do other authors highlight the same problems? what kind of modifications to the methodology are in order to make it more suitable for small companies? why should the presented case be considered representative for all small companies?

Author Response

Thank you very much for you review and for all your suggestions how to improve quality of the article.  We appreciate your comments and we implemented them into the updated version of the article.

The article was revised:

• The aim of the research was supported by references.
• English was reviewed.
• The introduction was supplemented with new references and research in the field of automated assembly lines.
• The results are presented more clearly. The relationships for the calculation of the hourly rate of line are removed from the results and moved to Chapter 2.2. At the same time, Chapter 2.2 is supplemented with the characteristic and relationships of the calculation of other examined criteria.
• The conclusion reworked in line with your comments.