Towards the Development of Digital Manufacturing Ecosystems for Sustainable Performance: Learning from the Past Two Decades of Research

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

 

First of all, I would like to congratulate the authors for their efforts in conducting this research.

Title

Your article is titled “The Obstacles and Prosperity of a Digital 2 Manufacturing Ecosystem in the Age of Industry 3 Revolution 4.0”.

However, shouldn't we encounter these words in the content of your article?

After reading your article I can say that the title is not consistent with the content.

Therefore, I recommend that you change its name.

 

Abstract

Lines 21-23 “The current study aims to identify the digital technologies’ efficiency in the entire manufacturing process and the collaborative work done related to the countries ’digital manufacturing ecosystem.

Lines 26-28 “The study’s findings showed work in the digital manufacturing ecosystem, especially manufacturing procedures and supply-chain channels, is moving to use digital technologies like IoT, digital devices, and smart factories”.

The purpose of the article is to "identify the digital technologies' efficiency" and the results indicate "showed work in the digital manufacturing ecosystem is moving to use digital technologies like IoT, digital devices, and smart factories."

At the level of the entire manufacturing process, is the use of digital technologies efficient or not? What factors / information / indicators prove it?

If we look at the end of section 1 "Introduction" we find the third purpose, for example:

Lines 95-97 “The current study also evaluates the collaborative research among the interdisciplinary subjects to develop the digital manufacturing ecosystem”.

 

Introduction

Your introduction is incomplete.

At the end of the "Introduction" section we must find the objectives of the study and the novelty elements that it brings.

Regarding objectives, you could list: evaluating the number of researches related to the digital production ecosystem (for example: carried out between 2016 and 2020) and identifying the most cited journals / articles (O1); identification of studies, analysis of their content based on research classifications, grouping them by keywords (“digital transformation”, “future”, “user”…) (O2) .. etc.

What are the novelty elements / contributions (scientific/academic) that your study brings in relation to previous studies?

The scientific organization of your article is not specified, please add this important paragraph.

 

Review Methodology

 

The research methodology, regardless of whether it is qualitative or quantitative, must be supported both by bibliographical references (theoretical and practical) and by methods / analyzes applied in previous, similar studies.

For example, the test on lines 149-152 seems rather theoretical than a conclusion of the author “Content analysis is a research method to analyze papers and texts that pursue to label and degree the apparent statement content about planned groups following an organized technique, authorizing replicable and valid texts' suggestions ”.

 

Results

Theoretical aspects (for example: definitions, particularities, classification criteria, etc.) related to the digital manufacturing ecosystem, digital transformation, management performance, sustainability, collaborative work on digital manufacturing ecosystem etc. should have been presented in a separate section "Literature review" , highlighting different research directions approached in the studies selected according to the keywords. In this part there should be more clusters, more results related to processes / plans / elements more or less approached by researchers in the field of research.

 

Discussion & Conclusion

Why objectives listed below are not found in the "Introduction"?

Lines 496 – 497 “were focused on two significant objectives. The first was digital technologies' efficiency in the entire manufacturing process.

Lines 541 – 543 “The second objective of the study is related to the collaborative research work on digital manufacturing, showing that developed and advanced nations are working together”.

 

Literature Gaps and Future Agenda

What are your proposals related to the activities / processes / plans that researchers should address more in the research process?

What would be the future directions for your research?

Add the appropriate paragraphs for: Author Contributions, Funding, Acknowledgments and Conflicts of Interest

The article is interesting and after major changes can be published.

Author Response

Please check attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper addresses a very interesting and appealing research topic; the approach developed is quite clear. To enhance the quality of this paper, the following issues have to be addressed before considering the paper for publication:

• Please define the acronyms introduced in the abstract (e.g., IR, PRISMA, etc.).
• The criteria adopted to identify the papers for bibliometric analysis are not detailed. In other words, the authors don’t provide any information on the exclusion/inclusion criteria lead to collect a sample of 259 paper, and the criteria adopted to identify (starting from 259 papers) a selection of 52 paper are not sufficiently defined.
• The framework of the manuscript should be revised. Many sections should be re-arranged and/or repositioned in the manuscript; e.g., the ‘Results’ section is introduced on page 4 (of 20); generally, these kinds of evaluations are in the final part the paper. Similarly, the conclusion isn’t in the last section; there is a section “Discussion and Conclusion”… quite than “Results and discussion”, etc.
• Please check and clarify the pie chart in fig. 3: many numbers showed on the chart are hard-to-read being overlapped, the overall percentage given by the sum of the percentage showed in each sector is greater than 100%, there are different section with the same color (why?).
• The ‘label of the series’ shown in Figure 4 (i.e., Total) is unnecessary.
• The authors claim, “In total, 92 records were included…” (line 201); the number of the research works included was 52. Is it a mistake?
• It is very interesting to note that the four clusters identified by the research work conducted are consistent with the dimensions of many readiness/maturity models (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.11.464 , https://doi.org/10.3390/app10248998 , etc.) already adopted to assess the companies’ performance under industry 4.0 perspective.  In my view, the authors should highlight this result to ‘validate’ the conducted SLR's effectiveness.
• Please check the ‘brown cluster’ introduced by the authors (line 211) concerning the map shown in fig. 5. There isn’t any brown cluster, probably is referred to the purple cluster.
• Please sort the record listed in the tables from 2 to 4 according to specific criteria (e.g., number of citations (consistent to tab.1), publishing date, classification, etc.).
• Please check the acronym “IR”; in some sections is specified as ‘Industrial Revolution’; in no case there the acronym was defined.

Author Response

Please check attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

No comment

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper addresses a very interesting and appealing research topic, the approach and the topics discussed in the paper are new and justify the interest for the publication. The structure of the paper is correct. The revisions adopted have improved the work. The suggestions proposed in the review report are included in the last draft of the paper. The mistakes identified in the previous draft of the paper have been corrected.