Determining performance criteria of railway market: a case study

Abstract This paper classifies a case study on railway clusters allowing analysis of competitiveness performance criteria including the innovation capability of industries via different models. Data are collected from the Turkish railway industrial cluster; where 130 companies are located. Porters’ industries Life Cycle Evolution, Diamond, Five Forces Models and SWOT Analysis are applied to explore which criteria influence at most on the cluster companies’ competitiveness performances and innovation capability based on operational conditions. Porter’s Life Cycle analysis showed that the cluster is between introduction and growth phase. This phase has typical characteristics such as high investment demand on R&D, lack of qualified staff which could be compared to the performance criteria evaluated from the other three models. Another aim was to research the consistency and difference between the applied different dimension scaled models. Delivery time of the suppliers, qualified staff, capital range of the companies and physical enlargement area of the production plants were found to be the most important criteria in operational view of the competitiveness. Another result is that the applied tools are producing similar and consistent results independently from their dimension scales