Empirical Performance Measurement of Cargo Handling Equipment in Vietnam Container Terminals

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

EMPIRICAL PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT OF CARGO HANDLING EQUIPMENT IN VIETNAM CONTAINER TERMINALS falls within the scope of the journal Logistics, but the paper according to my opinion doesn't meet the standard quality of the paper in one prestigious journal as "Logistics". A lot of core elements of one well-written and performed study are missing. An explanation can be found below.
- Topic is very interesting and important but seems that the authors don't have enough power to realize their ideas in the proper and quality way.
- What new brings your paper? What is the significance? Only some descriptive statistics aren't enough. You have listed some performances and on the basis, it wrote the paper. Maybe for the conference, but for such a journal isn't enough.
- Why you didn't apply some methods for efficiency measurement, for example, DEA model?
- Clearly described aims, the main contributions, novelty, and verification of results are missing in the paper. The overall structure of the paper and quality is very poor. 
- You have different fonts in the paper. A lot of errors.
- In the introduction section you should give an overview of the field significance, and should consider the following main questions: What are the gaps in literature? What are the main aims of this article?" Also, contributions are missing.
- No literature review with a clear explanation of the previous studies.
- Used references are poor and the list isn't appropriate for such a journal.
- Cargo handling capacity is a keyword but does not appear in the text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

The authors would like to express our appreciation to the editors and reviewers for their time in effort in reviewing our manuscript.  We hope the changes listed have made the manuscript suitable for publication and we look forward to your response.  Please find our revisions to reviewers’ comments in the attachments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Congratulations for the article written and for the field approached. Significant results and discussion are exposed however, some remark must be mentioned for improving the paper. 

Table 1, 2: How the performance was measured?

Table 1: Is the handling capacity for FEU same as TEU? Which terminals have quay cranes’ spreaders with twin-lift or quad-lift operations?

Table 2, 3, 4, 5: Which container terminal are the data from? Can you include terminal layout scheme?

279-289:  Is the difference caused by different capacities of vessels (e.g. not all cranes work on small vessel), different terminal sizes? Are specific RTG’s dedicated to specific quay cranes?

Table 3: Explain cause of zero values in table.

Table 4, 5; Can you explain in text Number of kilo-meters in oper-ating 01 month? For Jan-21 is it only 535 km?

Table 5; Can you explain in text Amount of oil supplied (li-ter) and Remaining amount of oil in the tank (li-ter)? Can you calculate real fuel consumption per operating hour liter/hour  for each month instead of this two columns? Fuel consumption varies between 8.77-11.11 l/h, average 9.73 l/h. It is better to use this relative parameter in Figure 3.

312-313 – June 10.94 l/h and in  July 9.37 l/h, which means that in this month the vehicle had lower fuel consumption. It can be caused e.g. by higher percentage of lighter containers handled.

Can you include the figure of container lift on/off vehicle used in container terminals in Vietnam?

Table 6: Can you explain why performance of terminal is higher than 100%?

342-366 – Different text size.

Is it posible to find regression model for parameters in table 5?

References are rather weak, missing citations of journals to this topic.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to express our appreciation to the reviewer for your time in effort in reviewing our manuscript.  We hope the changes listed have made the manuscript suitable for publication and we look forward to your response.  Please find our revisions to reviewers’ comments in the attachments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The abstract of the paper is very short and general. The abstract needs to be elaborated and include specific results and the most interesting results of the paper.

The paper contains only 25 sources. This number is very small. The paper must contain at least twice the current number of sources from journals over the last three years. 

The title of the paper is very unprofessionally determined. 

The analysis performed misses its in-depth elaboration. The authors should have also compared other factors and included them in a comprehensive analysis. 

The paper also lacks a description of the methods and scientific procedures performed.

The paper lacks the international context of the issue under study and a comparison with other similar surveys conducted around the world. 

The conclusion to one paragraph is very little, lacking a comprehensive summary of the topic and issues. 

Formally, the authors have not handled the paper well, as they have different types and sizes of fonts. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to express our appreciation to the reviewer for your time in effort in reviewing our manuscript.  We hope the changes listed have made the manuscript suitable for publication and we look forward to your response.  Please find our revisions to reviewers’ comments in the attachments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

 

- For the formulas, you used please add the references,

 

-Please describe the process of collecting the data for the research,

 

- Please explain how did you estimate the  theoretical operating time of the  vehicle/equipment;

 

- Please explain how did you estimate the unplanned stop time of the  vehicle/equipment,

 

- Please indicate the future directions of the research you proposed,

 

- In the conclusions you mentioned the system supporting the operations of the CHE; please indicate which system can be the best solution in your opinion to cooperate with the management of CHE operations

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to express our appreciation to the reviewer for your time in effort in reviewing our manuscript.  We hope the changes listed have made the manuscript suitable for publication and we look forward to your response.  Please find our revisions to reviewers’ comments in the attachments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have improved their paper, but my opinion is still now the paper hasn't enough quality for journal Logistics.

Regarding other reviewers, they gave positive opinions, which for me was little a strange, but such is the situation. According to that, I will give the chance to authors to additionally improve their paper.

Please clearly describe:

- What new brings your paper? What is the significance?

- Clearly described aims, the main contributions, novelty, and verification of results are missing in the paper.

- What are the gaps in literature? What are the main aims of this article?"

- Cite these two papers:

Vesković, S., Stević, Ž., Nunić, Z., Milinković, S., & Mladenović, D. (2022). A novel integrated large-scale group MCDM model under fuzzy environment for selection of reach stacker in a container terminal. Applied Intelligence, 1-25.

Mihajlović, J., Rajković, P., Petrović, G., & Ćirić, D. (2019). The selection of the logistics distribution center location based on MCDM methodology in southern and eastern region in Serbia. Operational Research in Engineering Sciences: Theory and Applications, 2(2), 72-85.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

The authors would like to express our appreciation to the reviewer for your time in effort in reviewing our manuscript.  We hope the changes listed have made the manuscript suitable for publication and we look forward to your response.  Please find our revisions to reviewers’ comments below.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The author(s) have not reviewed the paper comprehensively and in depth.  The paper does not meet the parameters of a quality article that includes a literature review, methodology of the paper, analysis in business practice using descriptive and inferential statistics. 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The authors would like to express our appreciation to the reviewer for your time in effort in reviewing our manuscript.  We hope the changes listed have made the manuscript suitable for publication and we look forward to your response.  Please find our revisions to reviewers’ comments below.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf