PONE-D-24-38835Scalable and Energy-Efficient Task Allocation in Industry 4.0: Leveraging Distributed Auction and IBPSOPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Li,

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Zeashan Hameed Khan, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. Low references in 2024!

2. At the end of the “Introduction” section, you should explain the remained sections of your paper.

The introduction should cover the following points:

• Background and Context: Provide a brief background of the problem. Discuss the current challenges and issues in this area.

• Research Gap and Significance: Highlight the gap in the existing literature and explain why it is important to address the environmental impacts in the production distribution network. Emphasize the significance of the study in contributing to the existing body of knowledge.

• Objectives and Scope: Clearly state the objectives of the research and outline the scope of the study. This should include a brief overview of the methodology and approach that will be used to achieve the objectives.

• Structure of the Paper: Provide a roadmap of the paper by outlining the sections and sub-sections that will be covered, giving the reader a clear understanding of what to expect in the subsequent parts of the paper.

3. The keywords are not standard. Please revise the keywords and choose realistic ones. You should consider the following rules:

⦁ Avoid using the word the research paper's title.

⦁ Keywords should indicate the general subject matter.

⦁ Use the keywords, to show the method and technique used in the papers.

⦁ Don't use abbreviations!

4. Check the English presentation of this paper to remove the typo mistakes. Some grammatical issues need to be addressed in the whole text. Please reform the long paragraphs. Please polish the writing and English of the manuscript carefully. The writing of the paper needs a lot of improvement in terms of grammar, spelling, and presentation. The paper needs careful English polishing since there are many typos and poorly written sentences. I found several errors. Help from the free Grammarly platform!

5. I encourage you to add more detail about your core contributions in the abstract.

6. Please reduce the similarity index According to iThenticate. (If it is over 15%).

7. Please categorize your and previous research in the Table in the section Literature Review to show the better research gap.

8. Due to the high volume of calculations, all the formulas should be re-checked to ensure that there are no errors in terms of indices, typing, or concepts.

9. Check all of your Figures and Tables have a good explanation of your text.

10. Please bring some good Figures in the introduction to support the ideas. If you can’t find a good one, please look at www.statista.com

11. Managerial implications are missing from the paper.

12. Check all the references that are correct and not duplicated.

Create a document containing all of your appropriate clear answers. I am going with a major revision at this stage and waiting for your corrections. Then, I give you my technical comments. please use the yellow highlight after revising.

Reviewer #2: This work proposes distributed algorithms for dynamic task allocation applicable to autonomous

robotic groups and coordination scenarios. The paper is interesting and the following issues need to be addressed in the revised version:

1- Distributed algorithms are widely used for coordination of autonomous agents. For example, the paper "A novel consensus protocol using facility location algorithms",

2009 IEEE Control Applications,(CCA) & Intelligent Control,(ISIC). This and similar works aim to distribute a group of autonomous vehicles for optimal dynamically evolving coverage and optimize the cost based on facility location algorithms. Recall that in distributed scenarios the consensus-based computation and data processing are distributed over the multi-agent network, where the optimization is localized. How your approach advances this and similar papers? Please compare your work with the mentioned work and clearly discuss the pros and cons.

2- Energy efficient resource allocation also widely considered in distributed setups. One example is to efficiently manage energy resources based on distributed resource allocation algorithms. See the following work: "Distributed energy resource management: All-time resource-demand feasibility, delay-tolerance, nonlinearity, and beyond, IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2023". This work considers nonlinear single-integrator dynamics with time-varying heterogeneous delays for distributed consensus-based resource allocation. In this case instead of a centralized coordinator to manage the resources, the decision-makers are localized with no need of a centralized coordination entity. How your paper compares with this work and general optimization based techniques? please clearly compare your work and explain pros and cons.

3- As a follow-up, briefly comment on the computational complexity of your consensus-based algorithm? is it of polynomial order? this is important in large-scale setups as in large-scale computational complexity considerably matters.

4- In distributed setups, the communication network of the robotic system is a main concern. What is your assumption on the communication network of robots? Does your research considers the practical notion of quantization, both in information-exchange and in data processing?

5- I suggest to summarize the main proposed algorithm in an Algorithm environment so the readers can effectively follow the gist of the paper.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Scalable and Energy-Efficient Task Allocation in Industry 4.0: Leveraging Distributed Auction and IBPSO

PONE-D-24-38835R1

Dear Dr. Li,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Zeashan Hameed Khan, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional): Authors are requested to follow the recommended referencing style as mentioned in the Plos One Author's guidelines. 

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors make moderate revisions to the manuscript and give a relevant response to the issues the reviewers are concerned about. Therefore, it could be considered a potential publication.

Reviewer #3: Review Summary for Manuscript PONE-D-24-38835R1

All comments raised in previous reviews have been adequately addressed. The manuscript is technically sound, and the data robustly support the conclusions. Statistical analyses have been performed rigorously and appropriately, ensuring the reliability of the findings. The authors have made all data underlying the study’s conclusions fully available, following PLOS ONE's data availability standards. Additionally, the manuscript is presented clearly, written in standard English, and is easy to follow.

Recommendation: Accept for publication.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Mohammad Rakibul Islam Bhuiyan

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