System Dynamics and Lean Approach: Development of a Technological Solution in a Regional Product Packaging Company

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations on the results of the project. I would like to make a small recommendation regarding the bibliography on the new logistics and packagings models that have helped to me. For example you can refer to the article by Sallez, Montreuil and Ballot: On the Activeness of Physical Internet Containers.

Author Response

Please find the response from the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors describe the methodology, the technology and the process that led them to the development of a solution for a product packaging company. The paper clearly describes all the phases that were required for developing the solution. 

However I fail to see the actual scientific contribution. The paper reads just as a project report and the value for the scientific community is not clear. Especially the analysed literature seems limited to few Mexican/Spanish resources, completely ignoring all the other literature that is related to Business Process Management (which is an area widely studied).

In addition:

- The abstract can be improved also mentioning where the study took place since it is a "regional product packaging company" which region are we talking about?

- In the abstract, Stella Architect is mentioned but no description or explanation of what it is, is provided

- In the abstract the authors state: "the main results were..." but only one result is clearly described

- The introduction reports a huge premise about Mexico therefore my guess is that the "Regional" stands for "Mexican"

- Southern Sonora... where is it? Mexico I guess... however the journal is international therefore the author cannot pretend that any reader knows where Southern Sonora is... specify that it is in Mexico please.

- Figure 1 is a Flow chart diagram. BPMN notation is a valid alternative to represent Business Processes.

- Figure 1 has an infinite loop caused by the "Is weight within the range of 10 g?". When the condition evaluates to no, the only action that is done is "Take the basket and place it on the scale to verify weight" and the condition will get evaluated again to "no" since nothing actually changed. The design of the process is wrong or missing a corrective action for the condition evaluated to "no".

- Despite the Literature Review reported is pretty detailed, the authors seems not aware of all the literature revolving around the topic of Business Process Management. In particular, most of the mentioned literature is limited to Spanish/Mexican articles. I find this approach biased and unfair.

- The "Materials and Methods" should be not only described but most of all the choices made must be motivated. Why choosing Stella Architect respect to other tools? Why Excel? Why Visio? Why all proprietary software and no open source software? This badly affects replicability of experiments and also it is expensive.

- Figure 2 represents System dynamics methodology. Which is the starting phase of such a cycle?

- Figures report labels that are difficult to read. The author should use vectorial images which allow the figure to be scaled without having resolution issues. 

- No need to divide subsection 4.5 into 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.5.3 if we have only few sentences for each sub-subsection.

- I fail to see any novelty in the proposed solution. Actually the paper reads just as a report of a project. A nice project but I fail to see why the presented approach should be considered scientifically relevant.

- Conclusions are really poor.

Author Response

Please find the authors' reply at attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

I thank you for giving me the possibility to review the paper named "System Dynamics and Lean Approach: Development of a Technological Solution in a Regional Product Packaging Company". I hope and your family are safety and well.

Looking at your paper :

a) the affiliation is not complete

b) about system dynamics literature : I would improve with the paper on SD on system dynamics. Look at someone.

c) About logistic : it could be interesting to include https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104075 it has interesting considerations also for future (Logistic 4.0) . These authors I found ,wrote a lot also about SD. Look at them if you like.

d) About the conclusions : please underline your weakness (about your study) and indicate the future research.

The paper is not bad, it needs only some improvements. Do these changes and you'll get the result!

Author Response

Please find the authors' reply at attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors considered some of the comments provided in the previous submission and provided some text that addresses them. Thanks for clarifying aspects related to the location where the study was conducted. However several comments/issues have not been properly addressed.

The previous comment to Figure 1 is "Not Done". Figure 1 has an infinite loop caused by the "Is weight within the range of 10 g?". When the condition evaluates to no, the only action that is done is "Take the basket and place it on the scale to verify weight" and the condition will get evaluated again to "no" since nothing actually changed. The design of the process is wrong or missing a corrective action for the condition evaluated to "no". The infinite loop is still present; nothing changed respect to this issue. When the condition "Is weight within the range of 10 g?"  evaluates to "No" the flow goes back to "Take the basked and place it on the scale to verify weight" that does nothing to affect next condition evaluation.

Labels in Figure 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, are not readable, please find a way to improve them. Especially, Figure 4 and 6 are of poor quality.

Despite the Literature Review reported is pretty detailed, the authors seems not aware of all the literature revolving around the topic of Business Process Management. In particular, most of the mentioned literature is limited to Spanish/Mexican articles. I find this approach biased and unfair.

I fail to see the actual scientific contribution. The paper reads just as a project report and the value for the scientific community is not clear. Especially the analysed literature seems limited to few Mexican/Spanish resources, completely ignoring all the other literature that is related to Business Process Management (which is an area widely studied).

What those this sentence mean? "The method applied was a composition of the methodologies researched under the referential and methodological framework based on that proposed by Aracil and Gordillo 230 [15]; Sterman [33]; and Lagarda-Leyva et al [12].The method was followed according to Lagarda-Leyva [11]". Are the authors following the same approach reported in [11]? If so, the previous citations are unnecessary (removing them would also reduce the amount of self-citation that now is around 5 self-citation)

Minors:

Row 231 add a space after the punctuation "[12].The". Please, revise the manuscript to correct similar mistakes.

It is not clear the meaning of the sentence "Another option could be the open source software in to value costs and benefits" 

Table 1 exceeds the page margins

Figure 1 could be reduced in size since it does not seem to add so much value.

The responses to a comment is not reported as in the submitted manuscript. Lines 545-546, in the submitted paper are different from the response provided to the comment.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 2

Thank you for all your observations for improving the manuscript.

Attached is the word file, including the responses related to each observation

Thank you 

Corresponding author

EALL

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

please correct the editing - (when you cite some one wiith 4 authors, you have to state et. al. (Di Nardo et al.)

Author Response

Dear reviewer 3

Thank for your observation

Attached is the file, including the responses related to last observation, you can see in the final manuscript in red color et al notation.

Thank you 

Corresponding author

EALL

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf