An Intelligent Redesign Method for Used Products Based on Digital Twin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is interesting and concerns the design process with the use of modern tools related to industry 4.0.

In the article, the authors presented a design procedure using data collected during the entire product life cycle, which is a modern solution appropriate for methods related to industry 4.0.

For design tasks, they use tools related to modeling, simulation and optimization referred to in the article as a digital twin. The term digital twin is, in my opinion, misused in the article. In my understanding, a digital twin is defined as a virtual model designed to accurately reflect a used physical object.

Thus, in the example that the authors describe and which concerns the clutch, the authors should demonstrate that the model described in their article and referred to as digital twin applies to a specific clutch and not to clutches of a specific manufacturer in general, and that each clutch from which data was used during the design process had its own digital twin during the exploitation process.

Authors should correct the article title and content or follow the above comments.

The article requires slight editorial corrections.

In the article, the authors use abbreviations and their explanation appears only on the following pages, for example - CBR technology - appears on line 142 and the explanation of the abbreviation on line 409.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well motivated and is an application of Digital Twin ideas similar to those of Tao et al [17, 18] in the context of remanufacturing. The paper is well written and overall easy to be followed.

The overall process proposed seems to be OK, however it is very high level. I believe that there is much work to be done before the ideas can be adequately tested to see whether they can actually be applied.  The case study remains at a superficial level. It seems that the authors have done a conceptual study, but have not actually implemented the ideas.  It would be a great improvement if the authors could detail the case study to show that the ideas proposed in the paper can actually work.

Otherwise I have the following comments:

1. Line 87 "Some Scholars": Who? References?

2. Lines 92-96 - The need for adjustments is clear. Why does it have to be in "real-time"? Or what definition of real-time do you mean?

3. Overall it is not really clear what your redesign problem is.  Do you want to (1) redesign a given product for better use (where I don't see the link to circular economy), or (2) re-use existing parts in the manufacturing process of new products (where the link to re-use and the circular economy is clear, but it doesn't fit your use case)?  Throughout the paper you seem to go from one to the other. Please choose & clarify

4. From Section 3 onwards the picture number references are wrong

5. p7 and p8 seem to be a listing of technologies which might be applicable. This adds little value unless you go further in explaining how to choose the technology for the specific step.

6. p7 & p8 - the lists of applicable technologies are incomplete. You could reference Qi, Tao Et al "Enabling Technologies for Digital Twins", 2021, which has a more complete list.

7. Section 4: all approaches are in principle possible, but require much work to actually do something. I suggest to make more concrete the requirements on the technologies required to solve each design step.

 8. I congratulate the authors on the case study which is a step in the right direction of providing applications. However: This is ultimately a redesign based purely on customer requirements. There are other stakeholders whose requirements may have priority: Manufacturer (Cost, complexity), Regulator (Safety, certificate to enter market), & all business process owners associated with bringing the product to market.  How are their requirements accounted for here? Or: Why have you not mentioned their requirements?

9. Figure 13, Step 1. Neural Network model. Do you have a reference where such a network has been implemented? Or an argument how to create such a network & validate that it functions correctly & to the required accuracy?

In general the English is very good.  However there are a few small grammatical errors which can be improved. I suggest getting a professional proof reader to edit the final paper

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Quite an interesting work, devoted to the methodology of developing a Digital Twin solution. The topic is topical and I consider the topic to be justified.

The work is a case study and although the authors presented a general description of creating the system, I have doubts whether it would work in another case (different product, but a similar process)?

 

I suggest making minor editorial corrections, there are errors in the numbering of figures and references to them in the text, as well as minor language errors.

Author Response

All responses are in the doc, please check it out.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc