An Emergy-Based Sustainability Method for Mechanical Production Process—A Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The aim of this paper is proposing an emergy based sustainability evaluation method. The authors take in consideration the resource utilization and environmental pollution of mechanical production process. The contribution of this papers includes also a new the sustainability evaluation index system, which is dedicated to the mechanical production process. The authors test their approach by applying a case study from gear processing.

The topic is relevant to the scope of the Journal. The title describes well the content of this paper. The abstract is very informative  and sums up well the content of this paper.

The structure of the papers follows the Journal’ guidelines The literature review is sufficient, and the authors refer to the relatively new papers.

In the Introduction, you have presented related studies, described the limitation of the commonly applied methods and justified use of the emergy theory in your research but you haven’t defined the research gap and prove the originality of your studies. Moreover, you have written that the emergy theory “has been widely studied and applied by experts and scholars from around the world  and has successfully been used to carry out ecological efficiency and sustainability evaluations….”:

-        Please explain the originality of your approach then. How the proposed approach is original? How does the paper contribute to the existing body of literature?

-        Please explain again in the Introduction the main purpose and contribution of your paper.  What are your research questions?

-         You have mentioned the innovativeness of your approach in the conclusions section. Please link stronger the content of the Introduction and the Conclusions sections.

-        The conclusion section should be extended; please highlight, limitations of your studies  and describe more the further research.

-        Please proofread the paper, check the language to improve readability.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is of interesting and up-to-date topic and presents an emergy based sustainability evaluation method to evaluate the resource utilization and environmental pollution of mechanical production process. In general – the paper is worth of publishing in Processes journal – but some major improvements must be done before publication:

1.       The title. I suggest to a little bit change a title of your paper into “An Emergy Based Sustainability Method for Mechanical Production Process – a Case Study”.

2.       Abstract. In line 11 you write “… this study proposes an emergy based sustainability evaluation method to accurately evaluate…”. How can you prove that this method allows to ACCURATELY evaluate resource utilization and environmental pollution. You must explain it (be more precise) or rewrite this sentence.

3.       Abstract. In the line 16 you write “… this method can better quantify and identify the sustainability…”. The question is “Better than what?”.

4.       At the end of introduction I suggest to define and add the goal of your paper.

5.       Figure 1. In my opinion you have missed one very important factor directly connected with efficiency and sustainability of production process – i.e. maintenance. Please note that effective maintenance can reduce the number of machine failures what reduces the number of used spare parts, oil, etc. (see e.g.: 10.1007/s10845-020-01734-3, 10.1007/978-3-030-85910-7_45, etc.). Moreover, the continuous improvement in this area can further reduce the negative impact on effectiveness and sustainability of manufacturing processes (see e.g.: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.10.037, 10.3390/app10217922, etc.).

6.       Please number the equations in whole paper.

7.       Section 3. I suggest to add the photo or picture of the gear that has been into account in your case study.

8.       Section 3. The technological process of the gear production should be described more clearly. In fact you should add the table with: number and name of operation, the machine tool/stand the operation is realized on, the unit time of the operation, etc.

9.       Table 1. Please explain more clearly what values are presented in this table. How these values can be measured in real industrial conditons?

10.   On figure 3 you present sustainable development indicators. How these indicators were calculated. Please show example calculations using presented equations and data presented in table 1.

11.   In Section 3 you write about “optimization measures for spur gear production process”. I suggest to replace the word “optimization” by “improvement”. Please note that “optimization” is a typical mathematical term. Using this word you should show what is the (1) goal function, (2) constraints, (3) optimization methods, etc.

12.   Conclusion. In conclusion section you should clearly emphasize what is a novelty of your method and explain how this method can be used in different manufacturing processes – in other words you must explain if this method is universal one or dedicated for specific process. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx