Managing the Knowledge Deficit in the German Automotive Industry
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The research is interesting, anyway I would improve the presentation of supposed findings through a graphical representation.
For example a prediction of what was derived from interviews: the number of IT expert needed, a sort of ratio between the automotive industry employee and the IT specialists needed for fulfilling the knowledge deficit. Or even to assign a measure to each knowledge deficit and the supposed improvement margin. Even though data are not a precise for suggested measurements, it helps the readers to have an immediate idea of what are the insights of interviewed people. Also I would present the wall of words, describing the interviews and the cited answers of the interviewed in a more schematic way and highlighting in some form the gist of the interview in relation to the deficit and the strategies.
Anyway it is a really interesting work.
Author Response
Please see attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper presents an overview of emerging problems in the German automotive industry as a consequence of decarbonization and digitalization, which pushed the R&D society and manufacturers to find ways of mitigating risks connected to the possible loss of primacy on leadership in the industry. One of the possible ways can be to improve knowledge management and concentrate on changing the processes within the industry as an optimization trend.
The research topic is interesting and worth considering especially nowadays. The general collision here can be described as follows. On the one hand, access of EU manufacturers to cheap resources is finished as a result of the war in Ukraine, thus making revenue (incl. labour&margin level) less profitable. And on the other hand, such a situation pushes leaders of EU industry in Germany (mostly chemical giants like BASF, or electrical like Bosch, etc.) to find ways to of moving the production capacities to other countries with "benefits" (e.g. USA, etc.), thus decreasing the overall trend of business development in a long-term perspective in EU.
Together with that, the questions raised in the paper are of particular interest to me personally, while playing a collaborative role in an industry-academia handshake and combining engineering management activities with Tier1 companies in Germany and Japan in the infotainment systems within the automotive domain and academic research and education.
The research methodology is clear and understood. It is based on the analysis and processing of the information obtained during the interviews with experts of different seniority competencies, thus making the statements subjective and not easily verifiable by the paper review. Together with that, I can state that they are precise and mostly reflect my vision of the trends.
The paper can be accepted for publishing after addressing the following comments:
1) eliminate repetitions of the paper content with already published https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/12296/3/12296-Wynn-%282023%29-Digitalisation-and-Change-in-the-German-Automotive-Industry.pdf
Self-citation and referencing are OK, but self-plagiarism must be avoided.
2) Please take care of the formatting of the tables according to the manuscript template;
3) Please take care of the quality of the figures to make them more readable. Figures are to be mentioned and placed on the same page of the paper to the much extent;
4) It is proposed to tie the results of interviews with analytical considerations of the Industry 5.0 trends, AUTOSAR thus adding resilience and sustainability goals as well as human, environmental and social aspects, which are connected with the statements made by interviewees.
Author Response
Please see attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is recommended for publishing after addressing the comments.
Please, ensure that the figures included in the final version of the manuscript will be of a higher quality.
