A Multistage Sustainable Production–Inventory Model with Carbon Emission Reduction and Price-Dependent Demand under Stackelberg Game
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The work is suitable for this journal and presents an adequate research structure. The results are clear and detailed, as well as the models used. It is proposed as an improvement to divide the introduction into introduction and theoretical review. As it is, it becomes very dense. In a single page maximum, contextualize the topic, objective of the work and explain what will be the structure of the article.
Author Response
Dear Referee,
We would like to express our appreciation for your valuable comments on the manuscript. Your comments have been carefully read and incorporated into the revised manuscript. (Please see blue texts in the revised manuscript.) Our specific response to your comment is as follows:
Comment: The work is suitable for this journal and presents an adequate research structure. The results are clear and detailed, as well as the models used. It is proposed as an improvement to divide the introduction into introduction and theoretical review. As it is, it becomes very dense. In a single page maximum, contextualize the topic, objective of the work and explain what will be the structure of the article.
Reply: Thanks for your positive comments and valuable suggestions. We have divided the Introduction section into Introduction and Literature review sections and reorganized the content description. (Please see lines 33-179 in the revised manuscript.)
We hope that the modification in the revised manuscript is appropriate as far as the paper is concerned. Once again, thank you for your valuable and helpful comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
The subject discussed in the article is interesting and useful, but there are a few number of issues that have to be improved:
- The abstract is well-developed, including research approach, results and contribution.
- The Introduction covers the importance of the topic, but I suggest to expand the introduction by including scientific contribution of the paper and practical implications. The article would benefit from a clear presentation of how and what theories the paper enriches.
- Methodology. Sample, method of research and methods of data analysis are clearly described.
- The results are clearly presented, but maybe it would be worth to expand the discussion including more comparison from previous research.
- In the Conclusions what I miss is the limitations of the paper.
Author Response
Dear Referee,
We would like to express our appreciation for your valuable comments on the manuscript. Your comments have been carefully read and incorporated into the revised manuscript. (Please see blue texts in the revised manuscript.) Our specific response to each comment is as follows:
Comment: The Introduction covers the importance of the topic, but I suggest to expand the introduction by including scientific contribution of the paper and practical implications. The article would benefit from a clear presentation of how and what theories the paper enriches.
Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. The scientific contribution and practical implications of this article have been expanded as well as the highlights of our model are clearly introduced in the Introduction section. Further, we have added Table 1 to summarize the characteristics of the previous literature and show the unique contribution of this model. (Please see lines 163-179 in the revised manuscript.)
Comment: Methodology. Sample, method of research and methods of data analysis are clearly described.
Reply: Thanks for your positive comment.
Comment: The results are clearly presented, but maybe it would be worth to expand the discussion including more comparison from previous research.
Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. The newly organized Table 1 can be used to compare the differences between this study and previous studies in the Literature review section. (Please see lines 178-179 in the revised manuscript.)
Comment: In the Conclusions what I miss is the limitations of the paper.
Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. We have revised the Conclusions section to add some limitations of this study and state future research directions. (Please see lines 611-619 in the revised manuscript.)
We hope that the modification in the revised manuscript is appropriate as far as the paper is concerned. Once again, thank you for your valuable and helpful comments.
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper addresses an interesting theme and it is written in an "easy to follow" manner. With all these, a series of issues should be considered, as follows:
- Please discuss the literature review in a pro-con approach, highlighting the advantages of the different approaches from the field while discussing the limits of the researches;
- Please better state the place of the current research made by the authors in the context of the papers already published in the literature;
- Please state the assumptions in relationship with the literature or to the real economic aspects extracted from different cited sources;
- Increase the readability of Figure 3;
- Please better explain the Algorithm in page 12 and highlight your own contribution;
- Please better define the problem to be solved in the numerical examples and try to connect their content with some real situations one might face;
- the values in Table 2 seems quite the same for various values of the input parameters - please argue this results. Please add more insight on the purpose of example 2 and state how you have chosen the way the values are changing;
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The proposed changes have been made and the article can be published.Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable and helpful comments.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the revised version of the paper. Please add in Table 1 besides the references, the name of the authors, the publication year and the country to which the study was referring to. Please increase the readability of Figure 1.
The following issues from the previous round of comments have only been vaguely addressed:
"Comment 5: Please better explain the Algorithm in page 12 and highlight your own contribution.
Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. We have tried to add explanations about the algorithm and highlight its contribution in the revised manuscript. (Please see lines 363-366 and lines 407-408 in the revised manuscript.)" Please add an explanation. The changes made in the paper are just some general ideas. Please try to explain how the algorithm works so one can re-use it in different other contexts. Also, your contribution is not highlighted.
"Comment 6: Please better define the problem to be solved in the numerical examples and try to connect their content with some real situations one might face.
Reply: According to your suggestion, we have add descriptions as follows. (Please see lines 441-445 in the revised manuscript.)
“Based on the above more realistic parameters, the purpose of this example
is to show the manufacturer’s optimal production, shipping and investing
polices and the retailer’s pricing and ordering polices when Stackelberg
equilibrium is achieved.” - please address the bold issue in Comment 6.
" Comment 7: The values in Table 2 (Table 3 of new version) seems quite the same for various values of the input parameters - please argue this results.Reply: This is because the influence of several parameter value changes on the optimal solution is very small. According to your suggestion, we have added explanations for this phenomenon in the revised version. (Please see lines 458 and 459 in the revised manuscript.)" - I did not find these comments. Please add a more in depth discussion and not just a line. In fact, there are pages of tables with numbers. A more in depth analysis is needed in my opinion.
Author Response
Dear Referee,
We would like to express our appreciation for your valuable comments on the manuscript. Your comments have been carefully read and incorporated into the revised manuscript. (Please see red texts in the second revised manuscript.) Our specific response to your comment is as follows:
Comment: Please add in Table 1 besides the references, the name of the authors, the publication year and the country to which the study was referring to.
Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. We have revised Table 1 to add the name of the authors after considering your suggestions and meeting the requirements of the journal format.
Comment: Please increase the readability of Figure 1.
Reply: Based on your suggestions, we have modified Figure 1 and tried to make it more readable.
Comment: "Comment 5: Please better explain the Algorithm in page 12 and highlight your own contribution.
Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. We have tried to add explanations about the algorithm and highlight its contribution in the revised manuscript. (Please see lines 363-366 and lines 407-408 in the revised manuscript.)" Please add an explanation. The changes made in the paper are just some general ideas. Please try to explain how the algorithm works so one can re-use it in different other contexts. Also, your contribution is not highlighted.
Reply: The algorithm developed in this paper is mainly to solve the optimal solutions of a single manufacturer and a single retailer in reaching Stackelberg equilibrium. The explanation of Stackelberg equilibrium has been explained in the first revised version (please see lines 363-366). Further, there are two major characteristics for the algorithm proposed in this article: (1) It can be used to solve the interactive decision problem between single manufacturer and single retailer where the manufacturer is a leader and the retailer is a follower; (2) It can be used to solve a nonlinear integer programming problem faced with the manufacturer (the leader). According to your comment, we have tried to add an explanation in the second revised version. (Please see lines 435-438 in the second revised manuscript.)
Comment: "Comment 6: Please better define the problem to be solved in the numerical examples and try to connect their content with some real situations one might face.
Reply: According to your suggestion, we have add descriptions as follows. (Please see lines 441-445 in the revised manuscript.)
“Based on the above more realistic parameters, the purpose of this example is to show the manufacturer’s optimal production, shipping and investing polices and the retailer’s pricing and ordering polices when Stackelberg equilibrium is achieved.” - please address the bold issue in Comment 6.
Reply: We really agree your viewpoints and have tried to use a real case to verify the proposed model. However, we find that it is somewhat difficult in practice because some sensitive data (especially cost data) companies are reluctant to provide. Alternatively, we refer to previous literature and use reasonable data to demonstrate the solution procedures, and conduct sensitivity analyses of the optimal solutions with respect to major parameters to identify several managerial implications. From the numerical results, the proposed model we developed can indeed provide a good decision-making basis for the relevant managers. Based on your valuable, we have tried to add a paragraph of text in Numerical example section as follows: (Please see lines 461-463 in the second revised manuscript.)
|
In this section, we use several numerical examples by referring to previous literature (such as [17, 22, 36]) and try to apply reasonable data to obtained the results from the previous section and perform sensitivity analysis for the parameters considered in the proposed model: |
Comment: " Comment 7: The values in Table 2 (Table 3 of new version) seems quite the same for various values of the input parameters - please argue this results.
Reply: This is because the influence of several parameter value changes on the optimal solution is very small. According to your suggestion, we have added explanations for this phenomenon in the revised version. (Please see lines 458 and 459 in the revised manuscript.)" - I did not find these comments. Please add a more in depth discussion and not just a line. In fact, there are pages of tables with numbers. A more in depth analysis is needed in my opinion.
Reply: According to your suggestion, we have tried to added explanations for this fact in Examples 3 and Conclusions section of the second revised version. (Please see lines 490-493, 561-565, 609-611, 628-630, 634-638 and 654-656, respectively.)
We hope that the modification in the revised manuscript is appropriate as far as the paper is concerned. Once again, thank you very much for your valuable and helpful comments.
