Production Systems and their Business Performance in Iran

Taxonomic studies in manufacturing not only give appropriate description of dominated organizational groups, but also provide necessary context for more special studies and theory building in subjects such as performance evaluation and manufacturing decision making. Available taxonomic investigations on manufacturing systems are limited. In this paper, taxonomic study of manufacturing systems has been performed based on nine decision categories in Iran. K-mean cluster analysis has been used and four clusters have been identified as industry average, world class, less developed and developed. Their business performance has been also studied. Findings imply that only the less developed cluster has significant difference in business performance from other clusters. Justification of the four clusters has been discussed and finally, limitations and suggestions have been addressed.