New Framework for Complex Assembly Digitalization and Traceability Using Bill of Assembly and Smart Contracts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Introduction:

1) The paper is missing of a dedicated state of the art section.

And although the introduction is giving some pertinent references, authors should extend their review in order to demonstrate that the blockchain technology has been adopted in many other industrial fields for traceability. In doing that authors should highlight the novelties of their research paper with respect to the others.

I have seen that a state of the art discussing smart contracts is present also in section 3.

Therefore I think that authors should add a couple of paragraph to explain the novelties of their papers also referring to the papers cited in section 3.

Moreover, no matter where they want to discuss the following suggested, authors should extend their scope to other industrial fields where the blockchain is being applied with success. Among the relevant papers to add I would suggest.

a)

Chiacchio, F., D’Urso, D., Oliveri, L. M., Spitaleri, A., Spampinato, C., & Giordano, D. (2022). A Non-Fungible Token Solution for the Track and Trace of Pharmaceutical Supply Chain. Applied Sciences, 12(8), 4019.

b)

Centobelli, Piera, et al. "Blockchain technology for bridging trust, traceability and transparency in circular supply chain." Information & Management 59.7 (2022): 103508.

c) 

Musamih, A., Salah, K., Jayaraman, R., Arshad, J., Debe, M., Al-Hammadi, Y., & Ellahham, S. (2021). A blockchain-based approach for drug traceability in healthcare supply chain. IEEE access, 9, 9728-9743.

 

Section 2:

2) Authors should better point out what is the novelty with respect to the previous work [19].

3) Authors depict at the end of Section 2 the advantages of BOA using Smart Contracts.

But it is not clear why it should be more preferable to traditional Client Server or Peer to Peer infrastructure.

 

Section 3:

4) Figure is 3 of poor quality and must be improved.

5) The concept of token predecessor is actually used in the reference a) that I suggested. Can authors explain what is the difference with the proposed approach?

 

Section 4:

6) Discusion -> Discussion

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Other Comments:

7) Overall the paper is easy to read but not very clear and fluent. I did not really get what is the motivation of this research.

Therefore, authors should try to write from scratch a motivation section in the introduction that explain the needs that has motivated their proposal...this latter is not clear as well.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article expounds a framework that harnesses block-chain and smart-contract technology to offer traceable and protected documentation of the assembly process. We expand the concept of a Bill-Of-Assembly (BOA) to incorporate data from the bill of materials (BOM), the associated assembly activities, the associated activities’ specification parameters and materials, and the associated assembly resources (machines and/or operators). The paper defines the operation of the BOA with blockchain and smart-contract technology, for attaining full traceability, safety, and security, for the entire assembled product. Future research could extend the proposed approach to facilitate the usage of the BOA 26 data structure in constructing a digital twin of the entire simulated system.

 

The article is well written and seems to be authentic with marginal contribution. However, to improve the work, few points should better addressed including the following:

The authors should show how the standard times of the activities are being estimated.

The authors should define what a digital twin data base is for better readability.

In this context, the OEE (overall equipment efficiency) should be addressed at least in the literature section.

Fig. 1 seems to be case-specific, wouldn’t it be better to include some general structure?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2 - Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

Reviewer 2

I appreciate your research, given that the topic is currently very much discussed. I have some recommendations: 

- the literature review should be expanded - I recommend including a separate section presenting the literature background of your research

 

Response:

A new chapter (chapter 2) “state of the art literature” is now added after the introduction with many new papers, attesting the use of block-chain in various industrial fields for traceability.

 

Reviewer 2

- the research question/problem and/or the scientific purpose of the work should be formulated on the basis of the literature review

Response:

An opening sentence in the abstract and a second paragraph of the introduction were added to emphasize the novelty of this paper.

Also, the research question  was addressed as follows:

Based on the additional literature review it is clear that none of these papers dealt with the traceability of dynamic structure of sub-assemblies that are becoming part of other sub-assemblies. The traceability in of subassemblies of this form is much more complex and challenging than in the cases mentioned in the literature.

Based on this finding our research question is: How could complex assembly operation with dynamic accumulative structure of its sub-assemblies be effectively traced?

 

Reviewer 2

- some graphical objects are a bit of poor quality (mainly figure 3)

Response:

Thank you for the comment. Figure 3 (now figure 4) is improved.

 

Reviewer 2

-there are many punctuation and editorial errors - please check the manuscript carefully, taking this into account, e.g. in the list of references there is a double numbering.

Response:

Thank you for this comment. We proofread the paper correcting punctuation and editorial errors (including the double numbering of references).

 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors

I appreciate your research, given that the topic is currently very much discussed. I have some recommendations:

- the literature review should be expanded - I recommend including a separate section presenting the literature background of your research

- the research question/problem and/or the scientific purpose of the work should be formulated on the basis of the literature review

- some graphical objects are a bit of poor quality (mainly figure 3)

-there are many punctuation and editorial errors - please check the manuscript carefully, taking this into account, e.g. in the list of references there is a double numbering.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3 - Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

Reviewer 3

Considering the manuscript a scientific paper, I suggest to improve the research design. It is descriptive, but there is a lack of details on the blockchain costs. The Ethereum blockchain is not free. Moreover, what is the smart contracts application? The example is very simple and ordinary.

Response:

The paper purposely do not touch on the actual implementation platform (e.g., Ethereum). There are many such platforms and the choice of implementation platform is not part of the papers scope (nor is it meant to be part of its contribution).

While, Ethereum Solidity was the first smart contract platform developed in 2015 using blockchain technology. Today, there are over ten smart contract platforms** (comparable to Ethereum) that run on various blockchain networks, use different smart contract languages and consensus mechanisms. These smart contracts power many businesses and applications, from traditional finance and insurance to crypto investments and major crypto exchanges.

Every blockchain platform implements smart contracts differently. Ethereum, for example, is a deterministic platform, so account balances and the order of transactions are strictly determined. Other platforms allow for randomness and possibility.

It is not the purpose of this paper to assess the costs of all these smart contract platforms.

** Examples of different smart contract platforms:

1.     Simba

2. Cosmos blockchain

3.     Near Protocol

4.     Elrond protocol

5.     Algorand blockchain

6.     Avalanche protocol

7.     Fantom network

8.     Terra LUNA blockchain

9.     Polkadot relay chain

10.  Cardano ADA smart contract platform

11.  Solana blockchain

 

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Considering the manuscript a scientific paper, I suggest to improve the research design. It is descriptive, but there is a lack of details on the blockchain costs. The Ethereum blockchain is not free. Moreover, what is the smart contracts application? The example is very simple and ordinary.

Author Response

We received only 3 reviews for this paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

authors have addressed my comments.

I have no further comment to raise.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for your approval and verification that we addressed your comments.