scientific research methodology

Reviewers Comments

 

Reviewer #1

The article presents an interesting issue concerning the impact of Big Data Analyzes (BDA) on the functioning of manufacturing companies.
The research results largely confirm the known facts:
– data acquisition is crucial for the application of BDA,
– BDA strengthens innovation capacity.
The research results showing no significant influence of BDA on the sustainable competitive advantage of enterprises are interesting.
Nevertheless, it is valuable to confirm them on such a large research group.
Main remarks:
– the research questionnaire included 15 questions – what were the questions?
– 4 research hypotheses were proposed – which and which questions allowed to confirm or deny them?
– Research was conducted in 117 companies – from which industrial sectors?

 

Reviewer #2

The manuscript titled „Sustainable Competitive Advantage Driven By Big 3 Data Analytics and Innovation” is a very interesting source of information about the Big Data analytics (BDA) as the most important base for Industry 4.0.

The manuscript presents the original research results. The content of the manuscript is compact and correct, and the paper has a proper structure. The abstract has the right content – the reader knows what the manuscript is about.

The Authors developed the scientific scope of the problem of data analysis in the light of Industry 4.0 in a very comparative way. They cited the appropriate literature – a very good literature review. They presented the organization of the research in a vivid way. The correctness of the hypotheses was correctly justified. The manuscript presents and discusses the results of the survey – based on a questionnaire containing 15 questions assessed by respondents on a five-point Likert scale.

Nevertheless, I note some shortcomings:

There is no information about the characteristics of the companies’ activities – it should be highlighted which sector and industry the surveyed companies came from. As is known, the meaning and type of information and data may differ depending on the sector (service or production). Have the authors analyzed industry differentiation?

 

Reviewer #3

I propose to enrich the article with a clear definition of key variables in the model – BCDA, JC, DA, and SCA.

 

Reviewer#4

This manuscript reports the findings of a study investigating the role of Big Data Analytics and Data Availability on Innovation Capability and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in an era of Industry 4.0. The paper is well written, well organized and deals with a research question highly relevant for the Industry 4.0 community.

 I  recommend  its  publication  following  the  satisfactory  implementation  of  the  below  mentioned recommendations.

Major Strengths:

1. The work presented in the manuscript is of average standard from innovation standpoint, but it has been executed well.
2. The paper is written in a way that is very easy for the reader to comprehend.
3. The methodology of the study and the tools used therein has been explained well. This is important because the audience of this journal is very diversified in nature and as such, topics related to BDA, IC, SCA, common in the Data Sciences and IoT community could be difficult for the Applied Sciences community, in general, to comprehend.
4. Figures and Tables are self-explanatory.

 

Major Weakness and Recommendations:

1. I was expecting a section where authors would discuss at length the Pros and Cons of this study. What are the weaknesses and limitations of this study? How can these limitations / weaknesses be tackled in future studies?
2. Authors should elaborate the logic behind choosing the current statistical methods to analyze the data.  What  other  methods  could  have  been  chosen  and  what  made  them  choose  this approach over the others?
3. This paper could have been much stronger if some real-world case studies were presented after the results section where they show how their proposed framework (result outcomes) could be implemented in a real-world industrial scenario and how that could bring a positive effect in that given case-study. That would have added so much more insights to this excellent work. Authors should acknowledge it as a limitation of this study.
4. I also expect the authors to discuss the scenarios where the findings of this study may not be applicable, e.g., scenarios where BDA may not increase IC.

 

5. The outcome  of  the  current  study  has  implications  for  enterprises  that  can  be  positively disrupted  with  Industry  4.0,  Cyber-Physical  Systems,  Robotics  and  IoT.  Therefore, the Introduction section should include these terms / concepts with relevant references to some of the recent developments in this field.  This way, it could be made more connected and comprehensive for readers of this journal (who are not familiar with every new development in the world of Industry 4.0). For example, authors could introduce these concepts in the following:

Line 33:

Businesses today are increasingly utilizing advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-Robot Collaboration that generates massive amount of data [1-9]

Line 45:

However, global competition and exponential growth in advanced technologies like, Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-Robot Collaboration [1-9] has forced many firms to invest in technologies that considerably enhance their competitive advantage among rivals.

 

Line 116:

Advanced Industry 4.0 based manufacturing technologies like, Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-Robot Collaboration with sensing devices, e.g., depth camera, proximity sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), etc., can connect to the IoT to generate big data [1-9].

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[1] Roy S, Edan Y, Investigating joint-action in short-cycle repetitive handover tasks: the role of giver versus receiver  and  its  implications  for  human–robot  collaborative  system  design.  Int  J  Social  Robot.  pp  1-16, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0424-9

[2]  Michalos,  G.,  Makris,  S.,  Tsarouchi,  P.,  Guasch,  T.,  Kontovrakis,  D.  and  Chryssolouris,  G.,  Design considerations for safe human-robot collaborative workplaces. Procedia CIRP, 37, pp.248-253, 2015

[3] Someshwar, R. and Edan, Y., Givers & receivers perceive handover tasks differently: Implications for human-robot collaborative system design. arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.06207, 2017

[4]  Tsarouchi,  P.,  Matthaiakis,  A.  S.,  Makris,  S.,  &  Chryssolouris,  G.,  On  a  human-robot  collaboration  in  an assembly cell. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 30(6), 580-589, 2017

[5]  Someshwar,  R.,  Meyer,  J.,  &  Edan,  Y.,  Models  and  methods  for  HR  synchronization. IFAC  Proceedings Volumes, 45(6), 829-834, 2012

[6] Tsarouchi, P., Michalos, G., Makris, S., Athanasatos, T., Dimoulas, K. and Chryssolouris, G., On a human–robot workplace design and task allocation system. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 30(12), pp.1272-1279, 2017.

[7] Someshwar, R., Meyer, J., & Edan, Y., A timing control model for HR synchronization. IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 45(22), 698-703, 2012

[8] Michalos, G., Makris, S., Spiliotopoulos, J., Misios, I., Tsarouchi, P., & Chryssolouris, G., ROBO-PARTNER: Seamless human-robot cooperation for intelligent, flexible and safe operations in the assembly factories of the future. Procedia CIRP, 23, 71-76, 2014

[9] Tsarouchi, P., Makris, S., Michalos, G., Stefos, M., Fourtakas, K., Kaltsoukalas, K., Chryssolouris, G., Robotized assembly process using dual arm robot. Procedia CIRP, 23(3), 47-52., 2014

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Minor Weakness and Recommendations:

1. 1. Authors should consider including the survey instrument used in the study as Appendix.

 

 

The report below was my comments on paper entitled: “Lean manufacturing and environmental sustainability: The effects of employee involvement, stakeholder pressure and ISO 14001” submitted to Sustainability” it is published now you can download it for free from internet “open access”

 

Author response to report 1:

Another paper (authors answer the reviewer questions and comments)

 

Author’s Notes

Dear reviewer,

The authors would like to thank you for taking the time to thoroughly review our paper “Lean manufacturing and environmental sustainability: The effects of employee involvement, stakeholder pressure and ISO 14001” submitted to Sustainability.  Your comments have helped us improve our manuscript. We hope you enjoy reading the current version of our paper. You will notice the changes in our manuscript in red ink. Paragraphs that have been omitted in this version have been deleted to improve readability.

You will notice that, following the instructions of Reviewer #1, sections and headings between 3.2 and 4.2 have been transformed: former section 3.2. has been re-named “Data analysis” (line 361), and headings 4. and 4.1. have been deleted (to include their content in 3.2.; Section 4.2. has been re-named “4. Results” (line 403).

In your review, you suggested:

1. It is better to replace the yes/no research questions with WH questions

 Yes, WH questions make better research questions. We found that in our manuscript, research questions were not formally stated; only research hypotheses.   Now the research question is formally present in the introduction (line 92)…besides the research hypotheses.

 

1. The relationship between hypotheses is not clear. The authors need to re-construct and explain with clear justification the relation between hypotheses’ constructs and accordingly re-construct the research model (figure 1. Theoretical framework) which describe the relation between the hypotheses.
2. In addition to the previous point, the authors should explain why the “go green” has mediation effects – the causal sequence is not correctly represented in figure 1 and contradicts with a sentence in line 159: ” In fact, the success of LM depends on the involvement of employees “- while adoption of “ISO14001” has moderation effects. This need more clarification for the reader. The same case for “employee involvement“.

These two suggestions have greatly improved our paper! Changes have been made in the Abstract, Introduction, and Review of the literature, Results, Discussion and Conclusion.

Figure 1 has been replaced (line 317).

 

1. Related work is not shown in the introduction or literature, some related work must be added to show for the readers the related previous studies in this filed.

We have added 27 new references. We are sorry if we have missed some references that you might have in mind. Besides showing the state of the art, these references have helped us better explain our hypotheses.

 

1. How did the authors decide on the list of 220 manufacturing firms i.e. why the survey focuses on the “manufacturing industry companies”? What is the objective of this step? How using data from other sectors will impact the results?

In this version of the manuscript (line 337) we explain that we used a purposive sample. Our population is made up of Chinese companies with a professional management system in place and some experience in lean manufacturing that could shed some light on our research questions. Therefore we are not looking for a random sample representative of the Chinese industry (or any other country) which surely would include many companies that have never heard of LM. Ad hoc surveys are usual in this area, although they have their weaknesses and limitations, that now have been explained in the manuscript. However, the possibility of generalization of our results has also been studied following  the advice of Reviewer #3 (line 488).

The objective of this step is to inform the readers in case they want to replicate the experiment or extend it to other sectors.  In this version of the manuscript we also inform the readers of the limitations of the study.

The sectors surveyed in our work are, more or less,  those included in other related studies. See for example Yang, M.G.M.; Hong, P.; Modi, S.B. Impact of lean manufacturing and environmental management on business performance: An empirical study of manufacturing firms. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 2011, 129 (2), 251-261. Their study used the data from the IMSS Survey, which entails the participation of many scholars in its design, and in consequence, it seems a good representation of manufacturing. Besides, the IMSS is also a convenience sample, because researchers decide what companies they want to survey.

Lean manufacturing was born in the automotive industry and has had great impact in the manufacturing industry.  Beyond manufacturing, we have examples where the principles of lean manufacturing, and some tools, have been implemented in healthcare or building. In these cases, environmental sustainability has also been correlated to lean management. But this is beyond the scope of our research.

 

1. What were the questions of the questionnaire?

The questions are present in Table 2 (line 359). We have rewritten them again to make them clearer.

1. What kind of valuable benefits and knowledge the article will add to the manufacturing companies and researches bodies? And how they can get benefits out of these results in reality for the manufacturing companies? This must be shown in the paper.

These points have been included in Discussion and in Conclusions (now relabeled Conclusions and implications, following the example of another paper published in Sustainability)

1. In the conclusion, no need to mention the research questions again

We have re-written this section, and we have omitted the research hypotheses, rather than “research questions”.

Sincerely,

The authors.