Strategic Supply Chain Planning for Food Hubs in Central Colombia: An Approach for Sustainable Food Supply and Distribution

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of the article „Supply chain network design for logistics hubs in central Colombia: a strategy for sustainable food supply and distribution“. Authors: Gonzalo Mejía, Daniela Granados-Rivera, Jairo Jarrín, Alejandra Castellanos, Natalia, Mayorquín, Erika Molano

Shortcomings of the article:

Need to change the title of the article. Need to write: “Network improvement” but not “network design”.

References provided not the accordance with the requirements of the journal for example In Table 3 and elsewhere.

The conclusions are not informative. In the conclusions must clearly show what problems the researchers have solved and which results are better than the results of other researches. The conclusions should include numerical values. The conclusions need to be rewritten.

Author Response

Dear reviewer

We do thank you for your comments and feedback. We have addressed them very carefully.

Shortcomings of the article:

Need to change the title of the article. Need to write: “Network improvement” but not “network design”.

R/ We changed the title to avoid confusion. The new title is "Strategic supply chain planning for food hubs in central Colombia: an approach for sustainable food supply and distribution"

However, in our opinion the word "improvement" does not reflect our proposal. We are in fact designing the hub network (location, users and flows), becuse it does not exist yet. We are not improving on an existing network.

 

References provided not the accordance with the requirements of the journal for example In Table 3 and elsewhere.

R/ We corrected this throughout the paper

 

The conclusions are not informative. In the conclusions must clearly show what problems the researchers have solved and which results are better than the results of other researches. The conclusions should include numerical values. The conclusions need to be rewritten.

R/ We re-wrote major portions of the results analysis and put the broader findings in the conclusions section. We added a section of final thoughts in which we put the previous conclusions which, we believe, are important.

We added more results in terms of transportation and emission costs, which show the sustainability of the proposed model.

We did not compare our results with those of other researchers because we did not find evidence of previous works on this specific topic. The paper of Etemadnia et al (2015) on food hubs was the closest to our research that we found, but the situation (USA vs. Colombia) was not comparable. We did take some elements from that paper both in the approach and in the solution method.

We hope this clarification satisfies the reviewer

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the effort involved by the authors. The literature review needs a little more attention. The authors should tell readers their contribution to the literature clearly and what are the uses of their results for academics. They must include relevant citations and improve literature review and it will be more appreciated if is consider also other  factors as the dynamically changing behavior, attitudes of actors (for any reasons like globalization, digitalization, pandemics, etc) . “Covering problems in facility location: A review” by Reza Zanjirani Farahani is a good one but is ten years old now, I suggest un update:  

The logistics of the short food supply chain: A literature review, Author Claudia Paciarotti  FrancescoTorregiani https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2020.10.002

Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) as Local and Sustainable Systems
Sebastian Jarzebowski Michael Bourlakis and Agnieszka Bezat-Jarzebowska https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114715

Optimal wholesale facilities location within the fruit and vegetables supply chain with bimodal transportation options: An LP-MIP heuristic approach, Author Hamideh Etemadniaa Stephan J.Goetzab Patrick Canningc Mohammad Sadegh Tavallali https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2015.01.044

Redefining the Supply Chain Model on the Milicz Carp Market, Magdalena Raftowicz,  Magdalena Kalisiak-Mędelska, Mirosław Struś, https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072934

A Sustainable Vehicle Routing Problem for Indian Agri-Food Supply Chain Network Design. Rakesh Patidar; Bellamkonda Venkatesh; Saurabh Pratap; Yash Daultanic DOI: 10.1109/POMS.2018.8629450

Agri-Food Supply Chain Management: Bibliometric and Content Analyses, Jianli Luo, Chen Ji ,Chunxiao Qiu and Fu Jia https://doi.org/10.3390/su10051573

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have taken them all into consideration. Please see our responses.

I appreciate the effort involved by the authors.

R/ Indeed it has been a great effort by the team. Thanks.

The literature review needs a little more attention. The authors should tell readers their contribution to the literature clearly and what are the uses of their results for academics.

R/ We included a list of the contributions which may not be clearly stated in the first version. In essence, we present a new mathematical model, a solution method and an extensive analysis that can be used for public policies. We also made clear what aspects we borrowed from the literature and what are the novelties of the approach. In this way, other researchers can make use of our proposal and of our results.

 

"They must include relevant citations and improve literature review and it will be more appreciated if is consider also other  factors as the dynamically changing behavior, attitudes of actors (for any reasons like globalization, digitalization, pandemics, etc) . “Covering problems in facility location: A review” by Reza Zanjirani Farahani is a good one but is ten years old now, I suggest un update:  "

R/ We agree and we added most of the references suggested by the reviewer. The Etemadnia et al., (2015) paper was in the previous version and it was a key reference for our papers. We added a couple more references related to intermediation. In any case, we believe the literature is comprenhensive: we have over 50 references, most are recent and from highly rated journals. 

R/ We also added some lines of text mentioning some of the problems faced by the actors of the supply chain (lines 52-58). We also mentioned the role of intermediation and the social network (lines 61-71). In the final thoughts section we also mentioned issues related to education and sensibilization. However, we did not include these aspects in the section of literature review (sec 2) because our focus was the math model and we did not want to divert the attention of the readers.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your efforts writing this paper.

You have a depth understanding and broad background knowledge related to the topic of your paper. Nevertheless in my opinion this manuscript has not enough scientific quality to be published in a Q2 JCR journal.

This manuscript presented a mathematical model for food hub locations in the central region of Colombia (line 494), to create a realistic model that can be used as a first input for policy making (line 502), under the direct supervision and follow-up by the senior RAP-E management (line 40), which is a region-wide public institution responsible of designing and implementing public policies for its food supply master plan (line 38).

Instead of a research paper (it has neither research question nor hypothesis) this manuscript reports a case study and gives arguments to justify making a political decision.

Besides English grammar and spelling mistakes (e.g. “peoples” in line 21: the plural of “person” is “people”, without s), the writing style is unacceptable. An academic writing style cannot include following expressions: “It is well-known that” and “the well-known competitive hub location problem” (both in abstract), “As known, these farmers rely heavily on” (line 44), “we ran 20 or so instances” (line 306), “A 50% reduction is not out of question, keeping in mind that the price currently paid by end customers is about three times what the farmers get” (line 463), “The results illustrate many interesting things” (line 470), “It is worth mentioning that” (line 474), “In our point of view” (line 481), “We are aware that” (line 485), “To the best of our knowledge” (line 498), etc.

Additionally there are problems related to citation (Lines 93, 224 and 260).

Yours sincerely.

Author Response

Dear reviewer

We do thank you for your valuable comments and feedback. We have taken them all into consideration. I'll respond one by one

Please see below:

Yours sincerely

the authors

"Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your efforts writing this paper.

You have a depth understanding and broad background knowledge related to the topic of your paper. Nevertheless in my opinion this manuscript has not enough scientific quality to be published in a Q2 JCR journal."

R/ Thanks for the compliment. Some of the authors have worked on the topic for many years.

With respect to the scientific quality, we respectfully disagree with the reviewer. We believe the paper has the components of a scientific publication: novelty, relevance, rigor and clear connections and acknowledgement of the existing literature.  We, of course, are open to further comments and feedback and by no means we believe our paper is perfect.

Novelty: we present a new and novel math model for the competitive hub location problem adapted to the realities of our country. This model can also be extended to many situations. The solution method also helped resolve the scalability problem.

Relevance. The problem is relevant and unfortunately, little studied. 

Rigor: We were careful to specify the sources of data and the assumptions. We carried out extensive computational experiments and performed extensive analyses.

Literature: We have over 50 relevant and recent references, most from Q1 and Q2 JCR journals. In this version of the paper we did a better connection with the contributions and gaps in the literature.

We acknowledge that we were not specific in the first manuscript in relation to the contributions and scientific value. We listed our contributions in the introduction section of the paper. 

 

This manuscript presented a mathematical model for food hub locations in the central region of Colombia (line 494), to create a realistic model that can be used as a first input for policy making (line 502), under the direct supervision and follow-up by the senior RAP-E management (line 40), which is a region-wide public institution responsible of designing and implementing public policies for its food supply master plan (line 38).

Instead of a research paper (it has neither research question nor hypothesis) this manuscript reports a case study and gives arguments to justify making a political decision.

R/ We agree with the reviewer. We added the research questions in the introduction section. 

Respectfully, we believe that this is not a case study as it aims to extend the body of knowledge in the topic of hub competitive location problems. The arguments that support the potential use of the model are technical and based on the results of the experiments. 

Moreover, we rewrote extensive parts of the analysis and of the results. We even added more tests and results. 

"Besides English grammar and spelling mistakes (e.g. “peoples” in line 21: the plural of “person” is “people”, without s), the writing style is unacceptable. An academic writing style cannot include following expressions: “It is well-known that” and “the well-known competitive hub location problem” (both in abstract), “As known, these farmers rely heavily on” (line 44), “we ran 20 or so instances” (line 306), “A 50% reduction is not out of question, keeping in mind that the price currently paid by end customers is about three times what the farmers get” (line 463), “The results illustrate many interesting things” (line 470), “It is worth mentioning that” (line 474), “In our point of view” (line 481), “We are aware that” (line 485), “To the best of our knowledge” (line 498), etc."

R/ We corrected this thoughout the paper. 

 

Additionally there are problems related to citation (Lines 93, 224 and 260).

R/ We corrected this as well

Hope our arguments satisfy the reviewer.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I would like to thank you for the significant improvement of your manuscript related to the strategic supply chain planning for food hubs in central Colombia.

You took into consideration all my suggestions and clearly improved the manuscript: all issues have been resolved.

I congratulate the authors for this interesting investigation and wish them the most success in their research activities.

Thank you very much for your efforts and for your valuable scientific contribution.

Yours sincerely.