Analyzing Consultancy on Production Systems Based on the Digital Triplet Concept
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study explores whether and how the flow of skilled consultants enhances production systems in external companies.
The merits of the paper are as follows:
- holistic view, an open innovation-like approach developed to capture the complex interactions (backward and forward linkages and knowledge enhancement potential);
- deep literature review,
- comprehensive case study
In this way, the authors go beyond the traditional organisational learning literature / external knowledge sources literature. Many papers have the shortcoming of not touching upon mechanisms that allow knowledge integration within firms by building on external knowledge / consultants. This paper to a large extent does it.
The paper does not address what happens after finishing the building on external consultancy, whether the newly developed approaches/standards can be easily hold in the future or not /a problem exposed by Jonhston (1963) Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 126, No. 2 (1963), pp. 237-249 / in an effort to maintain the production improvement.
The study also paves the way of a future research programme on what kinds of productivity indicators shall be used for consultancy firms for their knowledge workers.
Author Response
Thank you for your critique and comments on the correction. We understand that one of the points you pointed out needs to be corrected as follows, and we will explain the revisions.
>The paper does not address what happens after finishing the building on >external consultancy, whether the newly developed approaches/standards can >be easily hold in the future or not /a problem exposed by Jonhston (1963) >Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 126, No. 2 (1963), pp. 237-249 / in an effort to maintain the production improvement.
Since the content you pointed out is outside the scope of this paper, we have added it as the fourth item in Chapter 8, Future Work.
Reviewer 2 Report
1) The Digital Triplet concept is an extension of the Digital Twin inserting “the intelligent activity world”. A reasonable reflection is on using more the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) approach to address production systems;
2) Standardization of references. See the difference between citation [17] and citation [31];
3) Suggestions and comments of minor importance: line 240, delete “below” and put “as follows”; Put on line 312 “in Section 2.2” with a capital letter. Take “above” from Table 2, pg. 11, and put previously. Remove “above” from line 530 and “below” from line 531, replacing them accordingly;
4) In the brief summary of GCPM and in Fig. 4, in the last box put verification/validation (not just verification). Explicit in the text;
5) Error: Table 2 was inserted, but Table 1 does not appear in the text;
6) Place lines to separate the topics in Table 2 and Table 3, and place spaces to improve visualization;
7) Fig. 6 – there is a part written in Japanese that needs to be changed;
8) Figures 6, 7 and 8 need to be improved for better understanding. Specifically, Figures 7 and 8 are difficult to read even when zoomed in. In addition, they exceed the space of the page.
9) I did not find, in English, the reference [31] “31. Oshima, S. TPM Activities and Safety Management. Journal of Japan Society for Safety Engineering. 1998, vol.37, No.5, pp.302-306”. I only found it in Japanese. Can this happen in this Journal?
The English writing has been made simple and easy to read which is the most important thing. However, there are some cases where Japanese text appears as it did in a figure (Figure 6). And a reference was only found in Japanese.
Fig. 6 – there is a part written in Japanese that needs to be changed;
I did not find, in English, the reference [31] “31. Oshima, S. TPM Activities and Safety Management. Journal of Japan Society for Safety Engineering. 1998, vol.37, No.5, pp.302-306”. I only found it in Japanese. Can this happen in this Journal?
Author Response
Thank you for your comments and suggestions on the correction. We understand that your points 2) through 9) need to be corrected, and I will explain the revisions.
>2) Standardization of references. See the difference between citation [17] and >citation [31];
Although Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is mentioned in the citation from [17], it is only mentioned as one of the educational contents. On the other hand, the definition and utilization of TPM are explained in the citation of [31].
>3) Suggestions and comments of minor importance: line 240, delete “below” >and put “as follows”; Put on line 312 “in Section 2.2” with a capital letter. Take >“above” from Table 2, pg. 11, and put previously. Remove “above” from line >530 and “below” from line 531, replacing them accordingly;
We have corrected it as you indicated.
>4) In the brief summary of GCPM and in Fig. 4, in the last box put >verification/validation (not just verification). Explicit in the text;
We have corrected it as you indicated.
>5) Error: Table 2 was inserted, but Table 1 does not appear in the text;
My sincere apologies; it was a typo. We have corrected it as you indicated.
>6) Place lines to separate the topics in Table 2 and Table 3, and place spaces to >improve visualization;
As you pointed out, we have corrected it for easier reading by adding spaces and lines where appropriate.
>7) Fig. 6 – there is a part written in Japanese that needs to be changed;
As you pointed out, we have corrected all the parts described in Japanese by converting them into English.
>8) Figures 6, 7 and 8 need to be improved for better understanding. >Specifically, Figures 7 and 8 are difficult to read even when zoomed in. In >addition, they exceed the space of the page.
As you indicated, we have revised Figures 6, 7, and 8 for easier understanding. In particular, for Figures 7 and 8, we have excerpted only the necessary parts and zoomed them. We have also modified them so that they do not exceed the space.
>9) I did not find, in English, the reference [31] “31. Oshima, S. TPM Activities >and Safety Management. Journal of Japan Society for Safety Engineering. 1998, >vol.37, No.5, pp.302-306”. I only found it in Japanese. Can this happen in this >Journal?
My sincere apologies. The citation [31] is only available in Japanese, so I have changed it to a more appropriate English citation.
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper focuses on the analysis of the process of using production improvement knowledge and digital technology to improve skilled advisors for production systems in external companies and proposes a production system advisory modelling approach. The feasibility of reusing the skilled consultant decision making process within the D3 framework is also explored.However, there are some shortcomings.
1.In the introduction section, you can directly point out the innovation.
2.Can you explain in what format the generalized process model is stored in the data.
3.Production consulting system can make many aspects of improvement, can you elaborate on your focus and select the processing and assembly manufacturing department this part？
4.What is the termination condition of iteration in the consulting process model of generalized production system? Please explain in detail.
This paper focuses on the analysis of the process of using production improvement knowledge and digital technology to improve skilled advisors for production systems in external companies and proposes a production system advisory modelling approach. The feasibility of reusing the skilled consultant decision making process within the D3 framework is also explored.However, there are some shortcomings.
1.In the introduction section, you can directly point out the innovation.
2.Can you explain in what format the generalized process model is stored in the data.
3.Production consulting system can make many aspects of improvement, can you elaborate on your focus and select the processing and assembly manufacturing department this part？
4.What is the termination condition of iteration in the consulting process model of generalized production system? Please explain in detail.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments and suggestions o the correction. We will explain the revisions below.
>1.In the introduction section, you can directly point out the innovation.
After stating the purpose of this study in the Introduction of Chapter 1, We added, "How will production systems consulting change in the future as a result of the realization of formalizing the knowledge of consultancy of skilled consultants?" We have added four points regarding the following.
>2.Can you explain in what format the generalized process model is stored in the data.
The generalized process model stores data following the PD3 (Process Modeling Language for Digital Triplet) format. We have added an explanation of this in section 3.3.
>3.Production consulting system can make many aspects of improvement, can you elaborate on your focus and select the processing and assembly manufacturing department this part？
We have added the following explanation to the third paragraph of section 2.1.
"This study will focus on the machining and assembly manufacturing sectors, as the consultants from the production systems consulting team participating in the case study are professionals and well-versed in this area."
>4.What is the termination condition of iteration in the consulting process >model of generalized production system? Please explain in detail.
We added the following explanation after the definition of GCPM in the proposed methodology in Chapter 5.
"The GCPM iteration generally ends when the client is satisfied with the consultant's proposed improvement plans. Strictly speaking, the iteration may be terminated even when the client is not convinced of the improvement plans since it depends on the contract with the client."
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors,
Please find below the comments structured as:
1. Briefly summarize the content of the manuscript.
This paper aims to analyze the process flow of skilled consultants who utilize production improvement know-how and digital technology to enhance production systems in external companies. In other words, the authors provide an overview of our work and analyze the consulting process employed by skilled consultants.
2. Illustrate what are, in your opinion, the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses.
In this work, the authors establish and examine a process for production systems consulting.
The strengths are related with the main idea, the discussions, and the state of the art of materials and methods.
The weaknesses are related with the organization of the manuscript and the use of reference. Many figures are collected from references. What is the aim of the section 3.3. Digital Triplet [26]? Is the section completely from reference 26?
3. Provide a point-by-point list of your major recommendations for the improvement of the manuscript.
There are a few major aspects that the authors should take care before its publication:
- Although the organization of the manuscript is well structured, the first three chapters need to review. It is not clear which part is yours.
- There is not too much information about the development of the software and the validation.
- It is also necessary to improve the verification of the applicability of the domain-specific GCPM developed in this study for energy conservation improvements to different scenarios. This an aspect explained in future work.
4. If necessary, provide a point-by-point list of your minor for the improvement of the manuscript.
There are a few minor aspects that the authors should take care before its publication:
- Figures 5 should be improved.
- Figure 6 is in Chinese.
- Figures 7 and 8 have long and small character words difficult to be read.
- Many figures come from references.
Kind regards,
Author Response
Thank you for your comments and suggestions o the correction. We will explain the revisions below.
>The strengths are related with the main idea, the discussions, and the state of the art of materials and methods.
After stating the purpose of this study in the Introduction of Chapter 1, we added four additional points about the strengths and innovations of this study.
>The weaknesses are related with the organization of the manuscript and the >use of reference. Many figures are collected from references. What is the aim >of the section 3.3. Digital Triplet [26]? Is the section completely from reference >26?
This study's weakness is that it is domain-specific with few examples.
One of the aims of the Digital Triplet initiative described in section 3.3 is for unskilled engineers to learn their thought processes by imitating the digitally skilled engineers' approach processes. This is consistent with the aims of the proposal of this study, which we will discuss in Chapter 4 and beyond.
Regarding section 3.3, the description of PD3 and the Framework for reusing the decision-making process of skilled production system engineers are cited from sources other than [26], so we excluded the citation of [26] from the title.
>- Although the organization of the manuscript is well structured, the first three >chapters need to review. It is not clear which part is yours.
As for chapters 1-3, we do not claim originality, so we added a note to chapter 1 to clarify its positioning.
We also reviewed the text in chapters 1-3 and confirmed that only necessary information to explain originality from chapter 4 onward.
>- There is not too much information about the development of the software >and the validation.
In this case, the validation process has not yet been completed, so we did not add information on validation.
On the other hand, we added the necessary information on software to Table 1. Specifically, we added the information that skilled consultants used Microsoft Excel for the Pareto analysis and that the data scientist developed the power consumption loss generation calculation program using Python programming language.
>- It is also necessary to improve the verification of the applicability of the >domain-specific GCPM developed in this study for energy conservation >improvements to different scenarios. This an aspect explained in future work.
It is mentioned in the first item of the future issues in Chapter 8.
>- Figures 5 should be improved.
We considered it but did not revise it because we did not know what needed improvement.
>- Figure 6 is in Chinese.
As you pointed out, we have corrected all the parts described in Japanese by converting them into English.
>- Figures 7 and 8 have long and small character words difficult to be read.
As you indicated, we have revised Figures 7 and 8 for easier understanding. We have excerpted only the necessary parts and zoomed them.
>- Many figures come from references.
We considered again whether the figures in the authors' previous study were necessary to explain this study but decided to keep the figure for the sake of readability.
