Multicriteria Decision Making of a Life Cycle Engineered Rack and Pinion System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article carries out the research about the multicriteria decision making of a life cycle engineered rack pinion system. The manuscript is original and abundant, but there are some drawbacks needing to be improved.

1. Summary sentences are suggested.

2. Abbreviation is unreasonable in line 20, the full name should be used in the first time.

3. Reference is detailed in Introduction, but I still commend that you could cite this article: Design and simulation of meshing performance of modified straight bevel gears. This article put forward the gears modification method for improving the meshing performance, and the working life of the gear will develop obviously.

4. Full stop is necessary in the end of the figure title and table title.

5.The format is wrong in line 137, 167, 274.

6. Many formats have no basis or derivation.

7. The number of grid is not enough, and analysis of the FEA is not sufficient.

8. Abbreviation is better not to appear in the conclusions.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all of the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. Regarding the format of the journal the summary is not taking in consideration.
2. The full name of all the abbreviations on line 20 has been written, also leading to the change of the description of the VIKOR method in line 88
3. The contributions of the suggested research have been added to the state of the art description in lines 101 to 106
4. Full stop has been added to the end of every figure and table title
5. The format in lines 137, 167 and 274 has been corrected. Dividing the table in two for the first case.
6. The formats have been reviewed and corrected regarding the guidelines of the journal
7. The quality of the grid has been changed, previously it was used the default configuration, generating an average element size of 0.8 mm. However, taking in consideration this aspect the element size was changed to 0.5mm to all the assemble, raising the number of elements from 7137 to 435553 elements and 1253685 nodes. This has been added to table 5 and figure 1. Furthermore, it has been added the results of simulation convergence for the safety factor with a maximum of 10% allowable change for the equivalent stress in figure 6. In this sense, the quality of the grid and the analysis of the FEA has been improved.
8. The abbreviations have been removed from the conclusions

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Reviewer 2 Report

• I recommend to proofread the manuscript and check English language. The writing style is very hard to understand and meaningless sentences are frequent. For example: second sentence in abstract: “In this sense, the life cycle engineering supports the environmental issues by considering a process that evaluates the technical aspects of the product but also weights the importance of the ambient impact.” this sounds like the environmental issues are caused by life cycle engineering. Never ending sentence, lines 74-80. Line 128-129 “For the energy aspect, there has been determinate…”.
• Please revise how the notation of units in manuscript. Unit should be separated from the number “405.38MPa, a maximum deformation of 0.046mm”.
• line 78 “Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenjemeaning” meaning is surplus.
• Revise the use of abbreviations. For example: MCDM is defined in line 67 but then again the full term is used in lines 100-101; LCA in line 40 and 127.
• Please avoid citation in methodology section lines 111-125. Consider to move this to introduction.
• LCA in section 2.1 is very poor, information’s are not transparently shown. There are no information about production processes, system boundaries are not presented, and there are no information about the LCI database that was used. Inventory is not shown, it is not clear what impact assessment method was used?
• In MCDA it is not clear how and why authors selected Entropy, VIKOR, TOPSIS and COPRAS methods?
• Line 173-176 Entropy method wasn’t developed by Jahan et al.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. The manuscript has been reviewed and corrected the language
2. The sentence in abstract, lines 74-80 and 128-129 has been corrected to have a better understanding.
3. The notations have been reviewed and the units separated from the numbers
4. Line 78 has been corrected, the English meaning has been added and the indications that VIKOR refers to the Serbian acronym has been added in line 88.
5. The abbreviations have been reviewed, using the hole description for the first definition, abstract and conclusions
6. The information presented in lines 111-119 has been moved to the introduction to lines 122-100. However, the information from lines 119-125 was maintained in lines 158-161 since in this part it is described the utilization of the software library, the citation presented here is from the software itself.
7. The LCA was developed using the software CES-Edupack who hold the data base of the materials as expressed in lines 158-161. Furthermore, the method of evaluation that the software uses was better explained in lines 161-168
8. The motives to use every MCDM has been described better as follows
   1. Entropy – lines 260-264
   2. VIKOR – 280-282
   3. TOPSIS – 321-324
   4. COPRAS – 351-353
9. You are right, the Entropy was not developed by Jahan et al, we used the steps that these authors used in different research. This has been explained better in lines 347-349

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript ID: processes-1594674

Letter of Paper Review Results

Dear Editors and Authors,

The reviewer would like to submit the reviewed manuscript for the study entitled “Multicriteria decision making of a life cycle engineered rack pinion system” for consideration to publish by the Processes Journal.

After the process of review, the reviewer would like to give some critical thinking and idea to help authors have their job done easily.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this paper, the authors use many different methods (such as LCA, entropy, VIKOR, TOPSIS, COPRAS) for research. This combination shows the creativity of the authors when applied in practice to a specific problem. The results that the research brings, if accurate, will be a very important reference for businesses and researchers to apply in practice and further in-depth research. However, this combination will make it difficult to apply in practice because it is quite complicated and can cause the time and cost of optimal computation. The multicriteria methods make a balance between the technical and environmental issues but the best material was the one with the best compressive and yield strength due to that the carbon footprint and the energy consumption does not have a difference to lower the technical aspects. The simulation proved that even though the stress that the pinion must endure is very important, it manages it very well making the deformation minimum and the safety factor over the need, which confirms the technical property of the material compensates the environmental issues. 

General comments

1. There are many typos and grammar mistakes.
2. What kind of mesh were you generating in this study? Do the differences of the mesh types affect the numerical results?
3. And what kind of DOE were you employing for the design space? How many designed models did you use for the initial structure and size design?
4. How did the authors evaluate the validity of their results? When you combined many methods, have you considered the costs and the time for computing this problem?
5. What are the main limitations of this approach?
6. Simulation results (Figures 3-5) were taken on 17 August 2020. Please update these latest results to support your novel contributions.

Reviewer decision: Major revision

The reviewer hopes that his point of view could help the authors improve their work well.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely yours,

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. The manuscript has been reviewed and corrected the language
2. The quality of the grid has been changed, previously it was used the default configuration, generating an average element size of 0.8 mm. However, taking in consideration this aspect the element size was changed to 0.5mm to all the assemble, raising the number of elements from 7137 to 435553 elements and 1253685 nodes. This has been added to table 5 and figure 1. Furthermore, it has been added the results of simulation convergence with a maximum of 10% allowable change for the safety factor in figure 6, showing that the mesh change do not affect the results. In this sense, the quality of the grid and the analysis of the FEA has been improved.
3. The model of the rack pinion system has the objective of validate the material selection, in this sense, there was calculated only one model using a small vehicle real part as reference. This has been explained better on lines 381-382.
4. This research has the aim of proving that the utility of the LCA and the MCDM with CAE validation. However, it has not been considered the cost and time needed to solve the problem in the manufacturer industry, in this sense, this has been declared as a recommendation in conclusions from lines 606-611
5. The limitations of the research regarding local policy and the cost of analysis have been declared as limiting on lines 572-578.
6. Figures has been updated

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Reviewer 4 Report

This study proposed an analysis of 5 materials that can be used in a rack pinion system and are submitted to process of life cycle analysis to consider the environmental parameters as part of the criteria to be assessed by the multicriteria decision methods. The study is attractive, and the findings are useful for practical applications. However, the problem-solving techniques used are not innovative, and the Conceptual Model is not very readable and needs substantial revision. Therefore, I will accept the paper with a major revision

Some issues for the authors' reference:

1. The overall written English language is not very good and should probably be proofread by a native English speaker.
2. The main objectives of the study are well addressed. However, the research gab was not well defined so that the authors build over their results their objectives. Therefore, the research question must be clearly defined.
3. The literature calls it rack and pinion, so you should keep it as it is in the title as well as in the whole manuscript.
4. The introduction part of the paper needs to be separated from the literature review section. Hence, there needs to be a separate literature review section added.
5. There isn't a consistent overall style based on the journal template, and the article should conform to the journal's requirements.
6. The limitations of the research should be given in the discussion or conclusions.
7. Table 1 L137 needs to be adjusted correctly
8. Table 2 L167 needs to be adjusted correctly
9. You are probably referring to the table 8 in Line 326 instead of the table 14 in that line.
10. I don't see a discussion section in the paper where the findings in the paper can be discussed and analyzed based on the simulation results in the paper.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all of the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. The manuscript has been reviewed and corrected the language
2. A better definition of the research question has been added from lines 148-151. Making it coherent with the objectives explained after
3. The whole reference as rack and pinion has been changed in all of the manuscript
4. Following the format of the journal there is no separation between the introduction and the literature review. It demands introduction as the first part followed by method and material
5. The manuscript has been reviewed to follow the journal’s requirements
6. The limitations of the research regarding local policy and the cost of analysis has been declared as limiting on lines 572-578, and the considerations of the cost and time needed to solve the problem in the manufacturer industry, has been declared as a recommendation in conclusions from lines 606-610
7. Table 1 has been corrected and divided in two for a better understanding.
8. The formerly table 2 and now table 3 has been adjusted by changing the criteria to the assigned code expressed before.
9. The tables numbering has been updated all aver the manuscript
10. The discussion has been held within the results. The title 3 has been changed to “results and discussion”. In this sense, every result has been discussed with other research and these has been performed as follows:
    1. LCA: 404-416
    2. Entropy: 441-450
    3. VIKOR: 469-480
    4. TOPSIS: 497-506
    5. COPRAS: 519-527
    6. Simulation: 556-567

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Reviewer 5 Report

This study try to develop a Multicriteria decision making of a life cycle engineered rack 2 pinion system.
The manuscript has many weaknesses. In general, the contribution of the research is not clear.
Research work structure is poor and not well done. The manuscript is poor and not rigorous from a scientific point of view.
Here below are some comments. 
1. Abstract. The abstract tells prospective readers what authors did and what the important findings in the research were. It should be necessary to define in a clear way the contribution of the research and the main results.
2. Introduction.  A good introduction should answer the following questions: What is the problem to be solved? Are there any existing solutions? Which is the best? What is its main limitation? What do you hope to achieve?
3. Methods. This section should respond to the question of how the problem was studied. If a paper is proposing a new method, authors need to include detailed information so a knowledgeable reader can reproduce the experiment. In this paper, authors propose an integration of LCA, Entropy, TOPSIS, COPRAS and VIKOR. None of the aforementioned methodologies have been developed in detail. The description is very lacking in detail. It seems that the authors don't really know about these methodologies. It seems they haven't developed LCA, as well as the rest. It seems like a theoretical description only.
4. The authors propose the use of a multi-criteria approach, but do not mention a group of experts. This supports the hypothesis that they are not familiar with these methodologies.
5. Results. This section should respond to the question "What have you found?" Hence, only representative results from your research should be presented. The results should be essential for discussion.
6. Discussion. Here authors should respond to what the results mean. Discussion is missing.
7. Write a clear Conclusion. This section should show how the work advances the field from the present state of knowledge.
8. References list is poor and not adequate for a good scientific journal.
My suggestion is REJECT.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. The manuscript has been reviewed and corrected the language
2. The contributions and main results on the abstract have been explained better on lines 24-27
3. The questions of what problems to be solved, has been explained better on lines 148-151. Existing solutions has been studied and referred on lines 136-140. The hypothesis of which is best referring to the limitations has been expressed on lines 131-136 and achieve goals has been described in lines 151-156.
4. The development of the methodologies has been performed on lines 186-193; 216-224; 256-264; 278-282; 315-324; 345-353;378-382; 387-394 and table 6.
5. This issue has been developed along with the discussion on point 6.
6. The discussion has been held within the results. The title 3 has been changed to “results and discussion”. In this sense, every result has been discussed with other research and these has been performed as follows:
   1. LCA: 404-416
   2. Entropy: 441-450
   3. VIKOR: 469-480
   4. TOPSIS: 497-506
   5. COPRAS: 519-527
   6. Simulation: 556-567
7. The conclusion of how the research presents an advance from what is known has been added in lines 580-588
8. Bibliographical references from high impact journals and relevant information have been added.

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Reviewer 6 Report

Authors made very comprehensive MCDA-based research to select engineered rack pinion system. The structure of the paper is reasonable, results are valuable, however it is recommended to make some revisions before publication:

1. Page 4. Authors could provide more detail description of the assessment criteria as well as explanation on how these criteria were selected.
2. Lines 280 and 294. References are missing.
3. References to tables in text in some places are not correct:

• Line Reference must be to table 8 instead of 14
• Line 332. Reference must be to table 9 instead of 15
• Line 358. Reference must be to table 10 instead of 8
• Line 359. Reference must be to table 10 instead of 9
• Line 368. Reference must be to table 12 instead of 10
• Line 382. Reference must be to table 13 instead of 11
• Line 383. Reference must be to table 14 instead of 12
• Line 388. Reference must be to table 15 instead of 13.

4. As there are some discussions in Section “3. Results”, I suggest to rename it to “Results and Discussion”.
5. Authors shall revise the text and make necessary English spelling and grammar editions.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all of the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. The description of the assessment criteria has been added to 216-224
2. The missing references has been corrected and added as [11] in line 393 and [29] in 411
3. All the tables references has been corrected
4. Section 3 has been renamed as results and discussion
5. The manuscript has been reviewed and corrected the language

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Reviewer 7 Report

This topic seems to be practical. However, Authors should improve the quality of the manuscript in different areas:
1. The English and writing of the manuscript should be polished carefully. The paper needs extensive editing; the choice of words, language, syntax, phrasing, punctuation should be thoroughly checked and revised. Avoid using very long sentences. 
2. Clearly summarizing the main scientific contribution and novelty in the Introduction is needed.
3. The methodological part is written carelessly. Almost all entered formulas require correction. Authors should carefully scrutinize all notations and indexes. They should provide the information of all indices in front of each mathematical equation. They should take the notation for alternatives and criteria and use them consistently throughout their paper.
4. In the description of the methods, there are no references to the original works in which these methods were introduced for the first time.
5. In the paper there is no justification for the selection of the MCDM methods as well as the method of weighting used. What are the advantages of used methods? 
6. Authors should check references to tables. 
7. The extension of the conclusion is needed.
8. Please specify the limitations of the proposed study.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the time and work invested in our research, we greatly appreciate the corrections done in our manuscript. In this sense, all of the indicated point were emended using the track changes tool as suggested by the journal. How the corrections were made are described as follows:

1. The manuscript has been reviewed and corrected the language
2. The contributions of the research have been explained better on lines 134-136, along achieve goals has been described in lines 137-142.
3. The equations have been checked and corrected, the indexes have been highlighted and closed in parenthesis to have a better understanding.
4. The references to the original works of the methods have been added as follows:
   1. Entropy – 254-255
   2. VIKOR- 278-280
   3. TOPSIS – 315-317
   4. COPRAS – 345-347
5. The motives to use every MCDM has been described better as follows
   1. Entropy – lines 260-264
   2. VIKOR – 280-282
   3. TOPSIS – 321-324
   4. COPRAS – 351-353
6. All the table references have been corrected
7. Extension of conclusions has been added in lines 581-588
8. Limitations regarding the existing knowledge has been added in lines 136-140, the limitations of the research regarding local policy and the cost of analysis have been declared as limiting on lines 573-579 and recommendations on this matter have been addressed on 607-611

Once more we would like to thank you for the work spent in this research, we believe that your observations have improved this manuscript

Best regards

Ing. Juan Francisco Nicolalde. M.Sc.

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author has made careful modifications according to the suggestions.

I recommend that this paper can be accepted in present form.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the acceptance of our manuscript, we appreciate the time you spent evaluating our research and we are glad to know that your expectations have been fulfilled.

Best Regards.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK.

Reviewer 2 Report

• English: I still recommend to proofread the manuscript and check English language.
• LCA in section 2.1 is in unacceptable form for scientific journal. LCA should contain elements according to ISO 14040 and 14044 standards, not according to some simplified LCA software that allows fast calculations with high uncertainty. The methodology section should focus on methodology not software because the software is just a tool which applies the methodology (in this case standardized methodology!!!). Information’s are still not transparently shown. The functional unit is not defined. It is not clear have the authors calculated the environmental impact from steel production only or the machining of part is included as well? System boundaries are not presented, inventory is not shown, etc. It is not clear what impact assessment methods were used?
• I recommend to perform a sensitivity or scenario analysis with different criteria weighting or at least to discuss this. Considering that the Entropy method provides objective criteria weighting, it would be interesting to see how the results from VIKOR, TOPSIS, and COPRAS would change if subjective weighting is applied.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the observations made to our manuscript, we appreciate the time you spent evaluating our research. Regarding your concerns, the lenguage has been reviewed and emended. Furthermore, the LCA has been performed with the methods expressed by the authors Morini et al. (2019), published on the Journal of Materials and Design with a Q1 score and regarding the standard ISO14040, this has been explained better on lines 222 to 236. The utilization of this method has been considered since the Eco-Audit tool presents an innovative assessment of environmental impact that has been used before and is expressed on lines 72 to 76. Even more, the values that the software displays are useful in the multicriteria decision methods analysis, as this research has proved. In this sense, to avoid any confusion the sub title 2.1 has been changed to “Computational based Life Cycle Analysis Tool”.

On the other hand, to analyse the sensitivity of the criteria a second scenario with a subjective weighting method was performed. In this way, the Analytic Hierarchy Method was used as an alternative weighting method, where, in a subjective assessment the priority was given to the environmental aspects leading to the results that the performance of the materials on the MCDM was narrowed but the best material was considered the same as with the assessment of the objective method. The results have been presented in lines 503 to 528, a conclusion on this matter has been added in lines 587 to 590, and the tables with all the calculations performed are displayed on Appendix A from lines 622 to 640.

We hope that all your observations have been answered on the best way.

Best Regards.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has been edited at the request of the reviewer.
I strongly recommend the article to be published in the journal Processes.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the acceptance of our manuscript, we appreciate the time you spent evaluating our research and we are glad to know that your expectations have been fulfilled.

Best Regards.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK.

Reviewer 4 Report

All my recommendations have been successfully addressed by the authors. Thus, I recommend publishing this paper in this journal 

Regards

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the acceptance of our manuscript, we appreciate the time you spent evaluating our research and we are glad to know that your expectations have been fulfilled.

Best Regards.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK.

Reviewer 5 Report

The revised manuscript is improved and good enough to be published.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the acceptance of our manuscript, we appreciate the time you spent evaluating our research and we are glad to know that your expectations have been fulfilled.

Best Regards.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK.

Reviewer 7 Report

Myślę, że praca może być przyjęta po naniesieniu przez autorów poprawek.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the acceptance of our manuscript, we appreciate the time you spent evaluating our research and we are glad to know that your expectations have been fulfilled.

Best Regards.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors included subjective weighting factors into Multi-criteria decision making and improved their analysis. On the other side, LCA is still without significant changes and in poor form. Please consider my comments from previous review about LCA. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you on the comments of our research, to have a better response on your observation regarding the method and the ISO 14040 normative, we have included a description of the normative and justified how it applies in the present work. This matter has been better explained on lines 165-172; 176- 180; 207-215 and it also has been explained in the results discussion on lines 414-418.

Once again, we would like to express our gratitude on the work and time spent, regarding that your observations allows to improve our manuscript.

Best regard.

Juan Francisco Nicolalde

Research Analyst

Universidad Internacional SEK

Round 4

Reviewer 2 Report

The LCA is important part of this manuscript and still after four iterations it is not improved. Unfortunately LCA looks sloppy, it is based on a simplified software, and in my opinion LCA in this form is not appropriate for scientific journal.