Life Cycle Costing: Understanding How It Is Practised and Its Relationship to Life Cycle Management—A Case Study

ID

Reviewer #1’s comments:

Authors’ answer

1-1

This article discusses that life cycle management (LCM) and its practices are not stable, and discusses existing knowledge, inadequate research in the field, and the reasons why you decide to base your research on it. The discussion notes are suggested to the author as follows:

I sincerely thank the reviewer for reading in depth and providing feedback. Because the comments are succinct, there has been some measure of interpretation on my part if I have misinterpreted the comment then please let me know. 

All changes have been marked in blue in the text, these include also changes as indicated by other reviewers.

1-2

1. The paper needs to be clearly structured, the questions addressed in this article or research questions, and a clear agreement to show how the experimental part will answer the research questions and adjust the discussion content based on the new results. What is the meaning and conclusion of this article?

This is a major comment and based on it I have made changes to the following sections

i)     Title and abstract. Here I have rewritten parts.

ii)    Introduction. I have restructured and rewritten parts of the text and added, as suggested by the reviewer research questions. So now the structure is as follows

·        general context

·        problematization for RQ1

·        RQ1

·        how RQ1 is investigated

·        problematize for RQ2

·         RQ2

·        how RQ2 is investigated

iii)   Method. I have added information of how the analysis of the data took place in 3.1 and line 251.

iv)   The concluding discussion has been rewritten to a large extent. I have also moved parts from 4.8 to section 6 and also deleted parts that were superfluous.

1-3

Compared to previous studies on the same subject?

I am not aware of previous studies on the same subject i.e LCC as practice, but in relation to LCC adoption and tailoring previous studies are mentioned in Section 2.2. and discussed in 4.8.

1-4

2. It is recommended that the study content clearly indicate how qualitative data are collected and incorporated for analysis.

Additionally to changes to the method section 3.1 where I explain more about thick descriptions and  to line 251 as mentioned above,

I have added id codes to Table 1 and used these in sections 4 and 5 to clearly indicate which events are being referred to.

I have change the titles for chapters 4 and 5.

I have added/changed the introductory chapter to section 4, as well as parts of the results section: 286-293, 319-321, 349-350, 385-388, 447-452 and 4.7 

1-5

3. For the process methods discussed in the research, and the introduction of case studies in their results, more case studies are needed for comparison, and further application of research theory is established. What kind of case studies are carried out using practical theories?

I have added some examples in the introduction, lines 43-46.I also refer to practice theory's use in PSS, section 2.4. Practice theories are used in a wide variety of case studies and seem to pop most often in ICT development projects.

1-6

4. LCM / LCC be added to other methods to obtain objective quantitative indicators?

I am not sure that I have correctly interpreted your comment but your question concerns if LCC and LCM can be used with other methods. This is an interesting question and I touch upon this briefly in the literature review chapter i.e. section 2.2 but going into further detail on this issue goes beyond the research questions and aim of this article as I say in line 651-652.

1-7

5. Some sentences cited too much literature in the manuscript

I have gone through the document and aimed to reduce references to 1 or 2 and in exceptional cases 3 were they are needed.

ID

Reviewer #2’s comments:

Authors’ answer

2-1

The topic, the approach and the issues raised by the paper are for sure interesting  food  for  discussion.

Thank you for reading and reviewing this paper. All changes have been marked in blue in the revision, these include also changes as indicated by other reviewers.

2-2

The paper could improve in my humble opinion if it the proposed apporoach could put more in evidence that:

It is not easy, even though not impossible, to quantify cost related with sustainability issues (caputred in some way in par 4.3 lines.342-343...)  also because it depends on time and space

Costs, any kind of costs, are a matter of competitiveness for a company, therefore "artificial but representative" costs are preferred (captured in some way in  paragraph 6.1, lines 627)

some other editorial commentus:

This is an interesting subject but it was not the purpose of this research and even if I understand and agree with you, I cannot write about it because we did not attempt to quantify sustainability costs but material costs i.e. I do not have results from the case study to write about this issue so it would be speculative.  

2-3

In paragraph 4.3 too many “second” “second” “secondly”. If possible try to change the scheme of the paragraph or the structure of sentences to facilitate a smoother understanding .

I have rewritten this section, to try and make it clearer. I have only coloured blue the major changes but minor ones have been made too.

2-4

The reference to Nicolini al line 179 is without number. Also Palo et al line 478.

It has been corrected.

2-5

Figure 1 in paragraph 4.4 should be  Figure 2

It has been corrected.