Key Drivers and Performances of Smart Manufacturing Adoption: A Meta-Analysis
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for sending me the. I have a few suggestions to increase the value of this article.
The presentation of the research problems in the introduction part is toneless for reader. Presenting the answers of these questions are needed for robustness of the issues being offered.
What are the crucial issues in the distribution of smart factories both globally and regionally in Korea?
What is the practical and theoretical motivations for research in this study?
The first paragraph explains "According to Korean Federation of SMEs, ... ... ... development countries. What are the sources of this statement?
Consequently, many researchers ... ... ... strategy. However, ... ... ... methodologies. What are the examples and sources?
It is important to present the structure of the article as the last paragraph to make it easier for reader to continue.
Paragraph above Table 6 (p. 10): Furthermore, variables except ... ... ... ... ... significant. How to match this confirmation with the contents of Table 6? Why isn't the description of the Q symbol also included under the Tables?
Good luck!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper has tried to identify and analyze the drivers and performances to achieve smart manufacturing systems in factories. I found the result of this paper interesting but very important issues have not been addressed. Therefore, I recommend a possible publication of the paper after a major revision.
1- The introduction is weak and needs to be improved.
· The introduction serves the purpose of leading the reader from a general subject area to a particular field of research. It establishes the context of the research being conducted by summarizing current understanding and background information about the topic, stating the purpose of the work in the form of the hypothesis, question, or research problem, briefly explaining your rationale, methodological approach, highlighting the potential outcomes your study can reveal, and describing the remaining structure of the paper.
2- What is the difference between "Factors" and "Performances" in Smart Factory Adoption? Explain clearly in the literature review section. In the Input of model (1), it is stated that “Factors of adoption and use” and no difference and classification can be seen in this regard.
3- In the research model, in Figure 1, input and output are taken into consideration along with performance. Where is the "process" in this model? You have used systematic reviews, meta-analyses, statistical analyzes and the like. Consider them and add them to the model.
4- Suggest separating the input, output, and performance factors in Table 1.
5- Suggest proofreading the body of the paper for all the typos. Like <Table 1> and <Figure 1>.
6- The data are somewhat that's not satisfactory to me. searching in engines like google, coding results, 42 selected papers, 58 empirical analysis studies, and 218 selected texts, all of which are ambiguous. All data needs to be clarified and their statistical information should be clearly visible. You can provide them as supplementary files. Coding results are also very important.
7- All mathematical relations should be numbered and all their notations should be explained in the text.
8- In the conclusion, clear articulation of results in light of the research questions is needed. Which questions are answered, what is the contribution of the paper, how the presented method answers the research questions that previous methods are not able to answer?
- Separate limitations from future directions of research and clearly define each.
- Where are the managerial implications that you mentioned in the abstract?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper analyzed key drivers and performances of smart manufacturing adoption; reviewer has the following comments:
- Smart manufacturing is a very wide definition, it can mean very different sector by sector, it would be more practical to have more analyze based on different specific industries.
- As stated by the author, the research model is over simplified, it would be great if the author can provide a real case study to validate the model.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
This study focuses on smart factory adoption with a meta-analysis technique to analyze the related factors and performance. The impact of smart factory on financial and non-financial management performance is constructed by applying the meta-analysis. The paper is not a fit to the scope of the journal Sustainability, and it suffers from its poorly selected data sources, as well as lack of innovative techniques in conducting the meta-analysis. Furthermore, given there are many other similar tools to make decisions related to the adoption of smart factory, the reason to introduce a new technique seems unjustified.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 5 Report
1. This study focused on the investigation of the key factors for the introduction of smart factory, and the adoption performances, by using empirical analysis studies based on the collected 42 Korean literature and 11 foreign articles. This research obtains many useful results, which can be considered by the industries while they want to adopt the decision to develop the smart factory.
2. In subsection 2.1. Smart Factory, it is needed to give the full names of the abbreviations: S/W, H/W.
3. In subsection 2.1. this research defines smart factories as "people-centered intelligent factories that produce customized products at minimum cost and time by integrating all production processes from product planning to sales with ICT.” It is not appropriate, the development of smart factory is beyond the using of ICT. The manufacturing industries spread the adoption of ICT in production and business management since 1970, now the development of smart factory is based on ICT and fully uses the technologic tools such as sensor networks, IoTs, AI, cloud, big data, 5G, and Cyber-Physical System (CPS).
4. The research needs to describe the development and operations of smart factory, in order to link to the critical effect factors and its management performances.
5. It is not appropriate that Figure 2 appears at the beginning of subsection 4.1. Varification of Publication bias. The description of the analytic results is needed to place before Figure 2.
6. The foreign articles of overseas literature are not suitable, since most of the sample countries are not the developed countries with good development of smart factory and having well operation.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Today I have seen a significant increase in the quality of the article. Consider not using the word summary as the tittle of section 6.1.
Good luck!
Author Response
The quality of the paper could be much improved due to your good comments. The title of section 6.1 has been changed to ‘6.1 Research Conclusions and Policy Implications’. In addition to the above comment, all spelling and grammatical errors have been corrected. I really appreciate your comments.Reviewer 2 Report
The article has undergone enhancements and crucial aspects have been incorporated, rendering the present edition suitable for publishing.
Author Response
We corrected all spelling and grammatical errors, and the quality of the paper could be much improved due to your good comments. I really appreciate your comments of review report 1.Reviewer 4 Report
No comments.
Author Response
We corrected all spelling and grammatical errors, and the quality of the paper could be much improved due to your good comments. I really appreciate your comments of review report 1.