An Assessment of Smart Factories in Korea: An Exploratory Empirical Investigation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

the paper is interesting and I suggest to review the following:

Line 13 – abbreviation „AI“ is mentioned for the first time here- please explain here this  abbreviation.

Line 67 – Does this sentence mean that Korea has its own definition of smart factory? Or you want to say what the main goal is in general in Korea for establishing smart factories?

Line 71 – the verb „smartize“ is new coin. (it is not listed in Merriam – Webster dictionary as a word). Is this already common used coin? Maybe you should consult a proofreader?

Line 77-78 – What is the resource of these data about established level of smart factories (80% at level 1)?

Line 82 – The supplier-centered diagnostic system is mentioned here. It is not clear how this system is related to diagnostic of level of smart factories and why it is problematic.

Line 158-164   - You have previously mentioned that you analyzed  smart factory statuses in detail through an empirical research on 113 manufacturing companies that have established smart factories in Korea. Here is explained which smart technologies should be applied and that the production planning technology was highest. Could you please a bit explain what it means that it is highest and how that is related to smart factory statuses (since it is not applied yet). It is not clear.

Line 165-172 – Same as above – is this something that manufacturing companies would like to be so, or is it the status of their smartness.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Organizational readiness and the approval of managers and workers varies from country to country, which is why it is important to measure it in as many different contexts as possible and to compare and contrast the results. For this reason, I suggest that more detail is given in regards to the results of the questionnaire measurements titled ‘Manufacturing organization’ and ‘Manufacturing strategy’.

The article goes into detail about what the questionnaire was looking at and reported some of the results, for example, what managers expect out of the technology for it to be useful to the company. However, based on the number of questionnaire items and the length of survey results section, it seems that the results section could have gone into more detail in regards to each of the question.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf