Evaluation and analysis of the technological capabilities of Iran's garment manufacturing enterprises

Lack of attention to light industries, including the garment industry, has been one of the challenges of prioritization in industrial policy in recent years. In addition to the emphasis on key and knowledge-based industries, less attention has been paid to the existing technological capabilities in light industries. Despite many recent changes in these industries, less attention has been made to understand, analyze and document Iranian experiences. By focusing on the concept of technological capabilities, this article has developed a framework for investigating the evolution of the garment industry. Based on the matrix of technological capabilities, a semi-structured questionnaire was developed in order to evaluate the capabilities of clothing enterprises and to collect information from exporting one. Finally, 17 large manufacturing companies of the clothing industry were investigated in depth. In total, the technological capabilities of four companies were evaluated at an average level.The score of five companies went medium low, which were generally suppliers and their main focus was on production processes. The rest of the companies had different scores in different aspects. This shows the unbalanced development of these companies.These companies invested more in certain aspects while neglecting to develop other capabilities. In particular, entering into the design and creation of a brand was one of these capabilities, while the product production processes were not yet developed and were carried out semi-industrially. Regarding general trends, three general trends can be seen in the field of increasing product variety, weakness in production processes and the desire to diversify sales channels.