Harvester Maintenance Resource Scheduling Optimization, Based on the Combine Harvester Operation and Maintenance Platform
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In my opinion, the work does not represent a real agricultural maintenance station operation. Limited to a travel time optimization with boundary conditions (maintenance parts, workers, etc...). The method is very interesting. I recommend the application in studies with real data. The maintenance calls occur at different times. Weather and crop conditions should be considered for decision of urgencies index. The time of maintenance may vary when performing maintenance. Statistically there was no improvement using Q-learning. This method is underutilized. I recommend inserting it in scenarios with more input variables, using real data from a maintenance center, for example de velocity constant in 50km/h is irreal, this depend of road conditions, traffic jan, speed limit etc... Were simulated few taks maintenance per day (9), I recommend to improve the scenarios (simulations). The results are poor, not have a discussion.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to review the manuscript. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. Now we have carefully corrected and replied the manuscript for this revision. The revision instructions are as follows:
Comment 1. In my opinion, the work does not represent a real agricultural maintenance station operation. Limited to a travel time optimization with boundary conditions (maintenance parts, workers, etc...). The method is very interesting. I recommend the application in studies with real data. The maintenance calls occur at different times. Weather and crop conditions should be considered for decision of urgencies index. The time of maintenance may vary when performing maintenance. Statistically there was no improvement using Q-learning. This method is underutilized. I recommend inserting it in scenarios with more input variables, using real data from a maintenance center, for example de velocity constant in 50km/h is irreal, this depend of road conditions, traffic jan, speed limit etc... Were simulated few taks maintenance per day (9), I recommend to improve the scenarios (simulations). The results are poor, not have a discussion.
Response 1. Thank you for careful reviewing and correcting the problems in the manuscript. This is a very valuable suggestion, and the questions raised are very helpful to our manuscript. For the maintenance service scenario of agricultural machinery, we carefully checked the contents of the manuscript. In view of the proposed maintenance scenario, in the process of cross regional service of agricultural machinery, the resources of agricultural machinery service station are limited, and the maintenance resources need to be reasonably distributed under the condition of concentrated faults. Therefore, corresponding innovations based on the previous research was proposed. In the design process of this study, a platform system was developed, The configuration database of resources was reorganized and the systematic problem of service resources was solved. In the research process, the improved Q-learning algorithm of BP was chosen to solve the scheduling model in this paper. Through comparison with other commonly used intelligent optimization algorithms, it has been proved that the Q-learning algorithm is more suitable for solving the dynamic scheduling model in this paper. At the same time, the restriction and allocation of resources have been re added. We hope that our supplement and modification can be approved by you. Thank you again for your help and dedication to the manuscript.
We sincerely thank you for your enthusiastic work, and we hope that the correction will be approved by you. Thank you again for your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article is very interesting and presents practical knowledge. A small drawback are minor linguistic and editors errors and the fact that it is mainly based on Chinese literature.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers,
Thank you very much for your kindy comments on our manuscript. There is no doubt that these comments are valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our manuscript. We have studied comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope meet with approval. The responds to the reviewer’s comments are as follows:
Comment 1. The article is very interesting and presents practical knowledge. A small drawback are minor linguistic and editors errors and the fact that it is mainly based on Chinese literature.
Response 1. Thank you very much for finding this error. We apologize for the language problem in the manuscript, and have corrected it according to your suggestions. In addition, we also asked the native English editor to polish and modify it. so we hope it can meet the journal’s standard. Thanks so much for your useful comments. At the same time, in order to ensure that the manuscript has more reference value, the relevant references was improved in the introduction.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your time involved and this great opportunity for us to improve the manuscript. We hope you will find this revised version satisfactory.
Sincerely yours,
Zhao bo
Corresponding author: Zhao bo at Chinese Academy of Agricultural Mechanization Sciences, 100020, Beijng, China, [email protected],
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The problem addressed is relevant. The way it is implemented is novel, however more care with mathematical formalisms and notation is necessary. There are variables that are not properly identified by the authors. The multiobjective optimization problem should be presented in the usual way, that is, the objective function is maximized or minimized. The decision variables must be properly identified, the constraints must be stated as such.
In the case of some figures, especially figures 2, 6 and 8, there is intelligible text. We suggest translating the texts of figure 8. The quality of figure 9 is questionable.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to review the manuscript. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. Now we have carefully corrected and replied the manuscript for this revision. The revision instructions are as follows:
Comment 1. The problem addressed is relevant. The way it is implemented is novel, however more care with mathematical formalisms and notation is necessary. There are variables that are not properly identified by the authors. The multiobjective optimization problem should be presented in the usual way, that is, the objective function is maximized or minimized. The decision variables must be properly identified, the constraints must be stated as such.
Response 1. The careful review and correction of the problems in the manuscript from the experts are highly appreciated, which is a very valuable suggestion and is very helpful to improve the manuscript. The questions raised are very helpful to our manuscript. According to the expert's opinions, we have re-examined the problem of symbols, supplemented the constraints and other contents in the manuscript, and marked our modifications with tracking. We sincerely hope that our corrections can be approved, and thank you again for your suggestions for our manuscript.
Comment 2. In the case of some figures, especially figures 2, 6 and 8, there is intelligible text. We suggest translating the texts of figure 8. The quality of figure 9 is questionable.
Response 2. We thank the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and their constructive remarks. We have certified and corrected the picture problems raised by the reviewers, and corrected the language interpretation and picture problems in the pictures. At the same time, we have improved the picture quality and content with respect to figure 9. At the same time, we have explained it in words, hoping to get the approval of the reviewers.
We sincerely thank you for your enthusiastic work, and we hope that the correction will be approved. Thank you again for your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The article contains extremely important content regarding the maintenance of combine harvesters. The topic is important and very topical, especially during the current global food crisis. The presentation of the article, research methods, tools and conclusions used is at a high level. Nevertheless, there are minor editorial errors, such as a double space on line 109, which should be corrected. Apart from these minor remarks, I find the work very interesting.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to review the manuscript. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. Now we have carefully corrected and replied the manuscript for this revision. The revision instructions are as follows:
Comment 1. The article contains extremely important content regarding the maintenance of combine harvesters. The topic is important and very topical, especially during the current global food crisis. The presentation of the article, research methods, tools and conclusions used is at a high level. Nevertheless, there are minor editorial errors, such as a double space on line 109, which should be corrected. Apart from these minor remarks, I find the work very interesting.
Response 1. We thank the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and their constructive remarks. These problems are of great help to the quality of our manuscript. We have carefully corrected the problem of "line 109" blank space. At the same time, we have carefully sorted out the contents of the manuscript. For such problems, we have certified and corrected them.
We sincerely thank you for your warm work and hope that correction will be approved. Thank you again for your comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
In my opinion the simulated cases are not sufficient, does not represent a real process. The results are presented only in figure 9. There is no discussion of the results.
Author Response
Dear Professor，
Thank the reviewers for their time and help. The questions raised by the experts are of scientific significance and can effectively improve the manuscript and make it more valuable. According to the requirements of the reviewers, we added new cases to the manuscript. We hope that the supplementary contents can be recognized by the
reviewers. At the same time, according to the results of Figure 9 proposed by the experts, we added discussion and analysis in the conclusion. Thanks again for the help of the
reviewers, we added a chapter according to the content of the article, added a new case problem, carried out the final verification of the proposed algorithm, and the assumption and Simulation of the case. I hope I can give a more comprehensive answer to the questions of the reviewers.
In the process of standardized cross regional maintenance of agricultural machinery, the tools used for agricultural machinery maintenance require the operation qualification of the operation and maintenance personnel, so it is necessary to reasonably dispatch the auxiliary tools; At the same time, different types and quantities of spare parts are stored in different transportation warehouses. The quantity and transportation distance of spare parts need to be considered for reasonable scheduling.
In the maintenance process, the maintenance time with tools and the maintenance without tools are different, and the cost of solving problems with tools is also different.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
