The paper claims that 62% of organizations rely on spreadsheets for data analytics, citing Deloitte (2019) [17], and that 48% don’t mine data, citing Strategic Finance Magazine (2022) [18]. However, the latter source explicitly states its survey was limited to accountants in North American SMEs; a narrow, non-random sample. How can the authors justify generalizing these figures to all manufacturing SMEs globally without addressing selection bias or providing evidence that their target population mirrors this specific subgroup? This overgeneralization undermines the validity of the problem statement and risks misrepresenting the actual skills gap.
