Model for Optimizing the Ratios of the Company Suppliers in Slovak Automotive Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I thank the authors for giving me the chance to read this manuscript which investigates the topic of sustainability within the automotive industry, specifically the sustainability of the risk is analysed considering the network approach.

Although this theme stimulates a broad and opened debate, this manuscript needs to be improved because in some parts it is very confusing and needs to be significantly changed. I invite the authors to follow the suggestions below in order to improve their work and make it able to be resubmitted. The manuscript needs to be revised with major revisions, because in its current version cannot be accepted and taken into account for being accepted and published. I found this manuscript developed mainly considering technical elements without paying attention a lot to theoretical and managerial aspects.

Here are my comments:

1. In my opinion the title should contain specifically the nature of the study. You focus on the Slovak distribution network. The current title does not really and clearly give details about the research aim and the focus of the manuscript. All of us as scholars know the importance to choose the right title, which should be much more attractive and intriguing. It should be better to consider some other options like for instance: “Sustainability of the Risk in the Slovak Automotive Industry Distribution Network” or “Sustainable Risk for the Slovak Automotive Industry Distribution Network” or “Sustainability and risk: Evidence from the Slovak Automotive Industry Distribution Network”.
2. In the abstract, as well as in the introduction section, the authors need to clarify the specific aim of their study, as well as the implications, the contribution and the nature of the study need to be explicitly and clearly explained, and it should be better to give some details, for example, about the words ‘recent years’. Also, you should rewrite the abstract paying much attention to the language style and the structure. In this study, I guess that you try to investigate the topic of sustainability within the automotive industry, specifically you try to give a picture about how risk in this industry can be sustainable with some specific sustainable actions and interventions in the network. So, why don’t you specify how the automotive industry promotes and implements sustainable actions and solutions for achieving and aligning to the UN Agenda 2030 with the SDGs? Please, clarify much more these aspects in the abstract and in the overall paper exactly the research question. What is exactly your research question? It is very confusing right now. What’s the point?
3. In the introduction section, you need to better clarify the importance of this contribution for academics and practitioners. Indeed, here in the introduction section, it is necessary to clarify the specific aim and implications, also the nature of the study. You don’t evidence here that this is a qualitative study.  I didn’t understand well your logical development of the study and thus your message. It should be to better justify and stress more this part, also later in the background section. It could be better to clarify these points also giving more details about the nature of the study at the beginning. Please, clarify the introduction section and give more details about the nature of the study, the methodology and details about the development of your research idea. Furthermore, try to homogenize the words used in the manuscript and also in the introduction section as well as in the overall manuscript give details about the acronyms used.
4. Reading your overall manuscript, in some parts I felt lost and I found very difficult to find the link between your research aim, background, and discussion sections (too short). It should help the readers to have a schema of analysis very clear where you briefly describe your research idea, the starting point and the final point. You say many things but without a logical development of your thought also in the other sections. It should be useful and helpful to put a synthesis of previous studies on the topic, including reports also putting a summary table about the issue of sustainability for risk in the automotive industry, most previous studies for evaluating the sustainable actions and interventions of automotive firms in terms of SDGs, for instance, outlining the papers in terms of year of publication, nature of the study (theoretical/empirical), typology of model/approach used, geographic context, etc.

Thus, regarding the logical and methodological development of your study. I suggest the authors to better explain their logical theoretical overview also considering more previous contributions partially focused on the phenomenon and its main determinants, analyzing in details some more studies. You need to stress more this part and better and stronger justify and design your overall research model.

Also, it should be useful to give a brief presentation of the automotive industry at the beginning, maybe taking into account also the impact of Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, some references are not cited in the paper. Please, check.

Here, below you can find some suggestions just for having an idea:

- Xu, M., Cui, Y., Hu, M., Xu, X., Zhang, Z., Liang, S., & Qu, S. (2019). Supply chain sustainability risk and assessment. Journal of Cleaner Production, 225, 857-867.

- Sukitsch, M., Engert, S., & Baumgartner, R. J. (2015). The implementation of corporate sustainability in the European automotive industry: An analysis of sustainability reports. Sustainability, 7(9), 11504-11531.

- Günther, H. O., Kannegiesser, M., & Autenrieb, N. (2015). The role of electric vehicles for supply chain sustainability in the automotive industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 90, 220-233.

- Nassar, S., Kandil, T., Kara, M. E., & Ghadge, A. (2019). Automotive recall risk: impact of buyer‒supplier relationship on supply chain social sustainability. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management.

- Koplin, J., Seuring, S., & Mesterharm, M. (2007). Incorporating sustainability into supply management in the automotive industry–the case of the Volkswagen AG. Journal of Cleaner Production, 15(11-12), 1053-1062.

- Ghadimi, P., Azadnia, A. H., Yusof, N. M., & Saman, M. Z. M. (2012). A weighted fuzzy approach for product sustainability assessment: a case study in automotive industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 33, 10-21.

- Mayyas, A., Qattawi, A., Omar, M., & Shan, D. (2012). Design for sustainability in automotive industry: A comprehensive review. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 16(4), 1845-1862.

- Schöggl, J. P., Baumgartner, R. J., & Hofer, D. (2017). Improving sustainability performance in early phases of product design: A checklist for sustainable product development tested in the automotive industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 1602-1617.

- Alikhani, R., Torabi, S. A., & Altay, N. (2019). Strategic supplier selection under sustainability and risk criteria. International Journal of Production Economics, 208, 69-82.

5          Please, pay more attention to the language and editing style. Especially, I found some mistakes, such as the wrong connection between subject and verbal form or sentences too long, and typing errors. Also, check the editing style and please make changes about the editing strictly following the journal standards.

6          The final sections ‘Discussion’ and ‘Conclusion’ are too short and also without significant citations, please improve both sections, which need to be expanded evidencing also more the managerial and practical implications and future research perspectives, as well as the limitations of the study. Furthermore, please it should be better to be less deterministic.

Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to read your manuscript, I really hope that my comments will be useful to improve your manuscript. Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I am attaching an edited manuscript in the appendix. Firstly, we want to thank you for your scientific advice and guidance which helped us a lot. Secondly, numerous changes have been made, including a new title for our manuscript. It would be unnecessary to mark the changed content in yellow as most of the content has changed or is written more clearly (figures included). The aim of our study was, of course, maintained. We believe that the changes made will fulfil previous shortcomings and find you well.

Best regards,

Ing. Laura Lachvajderova

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of this paper is really interesting. Thanks for the opportunity to review it. The manuscript is valuable, but I think that some changes are necessary to improve its overall quality. They are listed below:

• It is not clear from the abstract the real contribution to the literature of this research work, therefore I strongly suggest the authors to focus the attention on why the proposed approach is novel and effective.
• Please, add a couple of keywords, in order to better define the boundaries of your research.
• At the end of the introduction, please introduce the remainder of the paper, in order to help the reader. I mean: "Section 2 shows...", "Section 3 is about...", "Section 4 shows...". 
• I think that a state-of-the-art section should be introduced, with the aim to clearly define the research gap you aim to fill. Please, in the literature review section you should mention the recent advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and explain how your paper can be framed within the context of the Industry 4.0. In particular, you should mention the recent advances of the blockchain for making the information flow along the supply chain more efficient [R1, R2, R3]. This is really important to explain how Industry 4.0 is addressing distribution issues. 

R1: Saberi et al. (2019), Blockchain technology and its relationships to sustainable supply chain management, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 57, No. 7. 

R2: Astarita et al. (2020), A Review of Blockchain-Based Systems in Transportation, Vol. 11, No.1.

R3: Pournader et al. (2020), Blockchain applications in supply chains, transport and logistics: a systematic review of the literature, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 58, No.7.

• Figure 13: I can not read some values. Please, improve the quality of this figure. 
• Appendix A and B are empty, then can be deleted.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I am attaching an edited manuscript in the appendix. Firstly, we want to thank you for your scientific advice and guidance which helped us a lot. Secondly, numerous changes have been made, including a new title for our manuscript. It would be unnecessary to mark the changed content in yellow as most of the content has changed or is written more clearly (figures included). The aim of our study was, of course, maintained. We believe that the changes made will fulfil previous shortcomings and find you well.

Best regards,

Ing. Laura Lachvajderová

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Greetings!

 

Too many arguments exaggerated the coherence of this article. Reduce the number of figures and tables into three to five. Only own research related diagrams should be presented with priority and likewise if any other. All the calculations of simulation should be presented as annex. Please only the most important result oriented table (small in size) should be there in the manuscript. It needs to clarify whether the sustainability is economical or environment or social as well as a good establishment of the sustainability (also supply chain/strategy) in the literature and result (discussion). I hope it would make it better reader-friendly. Thank you!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I am attaching an edited manuscript in the appendix. Firstly, we want to thank you for your scientific advice and guidance which helped us a lot. Secondly, numerous changes have been made, including a new title for our manuscript. It would be unnecessary to mark the changed content in yellow as most of the content has changed or is written more clearly (figures included). The aim of our study was, of course, maintained. We believe that the changes made will fulfil previous shortcomings and find you well.

Best regards,

Ing. Laura Lachvajderová

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thanks for giving me the chance to read again your revised manuscript.

I really appreciate your hard work. You made many changes making your manuscript very clear and suitable for the journal.

I only have some final considerations:

• Please, check for the text editing and typing errors all the manuscript;
• Try to provide some previous studies to support your discussion and conclusion sections, although I know that your study is original in structure and research design, especially methodologically but it should be better to support your study much more or you can easily say that regarding the specific topic of the study and its nature previous research doesn’t provide a lot of support;
• Also, I didn’t find your reply to reviewers’ comment also in the manuscript, it should be better to give details with a specific reply letter to reviewers’ comments.

Thanks again.

Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for a very helpful review of our article. We tried to incorporate your recommendations and ideas into the article as much as possible. It is possible that we did not succeed as you imagined. First of all, we tried to organize and make the article clearer. We hope it is easier to read and understand after editing.
Replies to your comments:

1. We changed the title of the manuscript. The new name defines its content and focuses much more concisely.
2. We reworked the whole abstract. Of course, based on your instructions on what should be the content page of the abstract helped us a lot.
3. In the introduction section, we changed its content focus and we focused on the current state of the automotive industry in Slovakia and a brief introduction to the issues that we address in the article. We have described the individual parts of the article content and what their meaning is.
4. In the literary review, we focused on the presentation of theoretical assumptions of the solution of the selected problem and we made a search of literature sources that deal with issues related to the article. We greatly appreciate your efforts to find resources that are directly related to the issue. We used most of these resources in the article.
5. We have tried to place more emphasis on the spelling page and to clearly identify and explain the terms and abbreviations used.
6. We have expanded the Discussion and Conclusion, moving some parts of the article to this part. In the end, we also clarified the importance of our research and expressed its need from the point of view of existing research by other authors.

Once again, we would like to thank you very much for the valuable advice and detailed instructions for revising the article. It will definitely help us in further research and writing other articles. We appreciate the comprehensiveness and detail of the instructions and manuals provided.

We hope that the article meets the requirements for its publication in the Sustainability journal.

Thank you very much, we look forward to future cooperation!

Team of authors

PS: In the appendix, we enclose a file to compare the overall changes that have occurred from the first submission to the final one.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

You have improved a lot. Take a final look and submit.

Thanks and regards

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for a very helpful review of our article. We tried to incorporate your recommendations and ideas into the article as much as possible. We hope it is easier to read and understand after editing.

1. We changed the title of the manuscript. The new name defines its content and focuses much more concisely.
2. We reworked the whole abstract. Of course, based on your instructions on what should be the content page of the abstract helped us a lot.
3. In the introduction section, we changed its content focus and we focused on the current state of the automotive industry in Slovakia and a brief introduction to the issues that we address in the article. We have described the individual parts of the article content and what their meaning is.
4. In the literary review, we focused on the presentation of theoretical assumptions of the solution of the selected problem and we made a search of literature sources that deal with issues related to the article. We greatly appreciate your efforts to find resources that are directly related to the issue. We used most of these resources in the article.
5. We have tried to place more emphasis on the spelling page and to clearly identify and explain the terms and abbreviations used.
6. We have expanded the Discussion and Conclusion, moving some parts of the article to this part. In the end, we also clarified the importance of our research and expressed its need from the point of view of existing research by other authors.
Once again, we would like to thank you very much for the valuable advice and detailed instructions for revising the article. It will definitely help us in further research and writing other articles. We appreciate the comprehensiveness and detail of the instructions and manuals provided.
We hope that the article meets the requirements for its publication in the Sustainability journal.

Thank you very much, we look forward to future cooperation!

Team of authors

PS: In the appendix, we enclose a file to compare the overall changes that have occurred from the first submission to the last one.