Managing Perishability in the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript fits the aims and scope of the journal. The research work was well conducted and reported. My comments and suggestion for revision are as follows:
# Format of the manuscript needs to be checked, some sections are missing (e.g., funding information, authors contribution, conflict of interest, etc.).
# References need to be checked for consistency, because some are provided with DOI but some are not.
# Appendices (pages 34–40) would be better to be reported as Supplementary Materials.
# Even though the authors used a high number of data in the analysis, but the data were collected within 4 months only, from January to April if I am not wrong. Due to seasonal changes, there may be huge variation in the total production of fruits and vegetables especially those from tropical countries. Also, the quality of the products may be influenced by seasonal changes. All of these circumstances may affect the drivers of the spoilage evaluated and determined by the authors, thereby resulting different recommendations. Accordingly, are the author’s model and recommendation still valid for the whole year management? I think some additional discussion are needed.
# The following minor changes are needed:
Page 5: order cycle, well as quality issues --> order cycle, as well as quality issues
Page 12: On the other hand: fruits and vegetables --> On the other hand, fruits and vegetables
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper examines the problem of spoilage in fresh food supply which is a very important issue on both economic and environmental terms. It identifies various drivers of spoilage in the day-fresh category and proceeds to make specific recommendations that may alleviate this problem and offer managerial insights.
Although the research was not conducted recently and the explanatory power of the model runs is not very high, there are significant advantages in terms of how the supply chain is analysed and the hypotheses that are unfolded and tested with this experimental design.
The only part I did not find so clearly written is section 6 with the results and the discussion (mostly 6.3). For that reason I would recommend editing section 6 and presenting the results in a more succinct way.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Thanks for your submission, it has been an interesting read and I have made the following observations as both an academic and ex-industry snr supply chain category manager. Also, how are the results influenced by store size / footprint / location?
- It would be useful to see the practices and theoretical perspectives at a much earlier stage e.g. granularity, traceability, track-ability, lean and agile systems, forecasting theories linked to exponential smoothing etc.
- Some of the literature sources are quite old relative to the contemporary nature of the problem under researche.g. Ferguson and Ketzenberg (2006) - days fresh perspectives and tech enablers have progressed somewhat during the intervening period.
- The earlier passages are more narraitive than explanatory from a scientific journal perspective.
- I am not too sure if you fully explore the inventory issues through the different position of store level management, as opposed to centralised data and centralised ordering decisions as 'drivers' to the current state of affairs. How might a centralised 'big data' approach work and what would be the trade-offs?
- Direct to store deliveries: trade offs? barriers? opportunities? risk?
- So, are these 'pre-orders' a form of outline purchase agreements? If so, what are the advantages and disadvantages and, what does theory and research around purchasing / forecasting say about them?
- I am quite happy with the modelling. However I do think that some of the ensuing discussions are impacted upon by the issues which I have raised in my aforementioned comments.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
