Redesign of the Curing Area of the Tire Manufacturing Process

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents a case study which is of practical usefulness. There are several areas where the paper can be improved and the annotated paper attached presents these. A summary of the improvement areas are listed below:

Introduction/Literature review:

A lot of good facts are presented in this section of the paper. This facts need to be more logically presented. 

 

Methodology

The methodology presented as in figure 2 is good.

 

Results

The results need to be explained more clearly. For example in using the fish-bone diagram to analyse root-causes, the cause-effect relationship between several the factors presented is not clear.

It would be good to more quantitatively evaluate the performance of the "AS-IS" process and compare with the performance of the improved process (what type of % improvement was obtained), discussing the results obtained with other results reported in the literature (e.g. is it similar/better/worse to that obtained for similar industries and why).

There is a need for more significant insights to be derived from the results than the rather obvious "we applied these process improvement tools and the process has been improved".

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

We kindly thank you for your relevant comments.

Please find attached the point-by-point response.

 

Sincerely yours,

Irina Severin

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall an interesting case study. However, there some areas for improvement:

The appropriateness of the methodology used needs to be explained, either in a separate methodology section or within a sub-section of the Case Study section.

The Case Study section spends a great deal of time describing the processes in the company which is informative.  However, there was no description of the people involved in the project (both analysing and implementing). Their role within the company (e.g. quality manager) and role within the case study (e.g. implementing shop floor changes) needs to be provided. As it stands if someone wishing to replicate this work in their own company was to read the paper they would not know who to involve. Furthermore, it raises concerns as to whether an appropriate method was used to investigate the issues, consult and then implement changes.

Please consider whether the results could be better presented in another way. For example are bulletpoints the most appropriate way to list some of the results? Perhaps a table might be more appropriate.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

We kindly thank you for the relevant comments.

Please find attached the point-by-point response.

 

Sincerely yours,

Irina Severin

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

My main concerns regarding the case study have been addressed.