Title: Strategic taxonomy of supply chain sustainability in manufacturing companies: evidence from Iran

Authors: Hossein Alaee Kakhki; Amir Mohammad Fakoor Saghih; Alireza Pooya

Addresses: Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran ' Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran ' Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract: The present study was conducted with the aim of clustering manufacturing companies based on the indicators affecting the supply chain sustainability. For this purpose, 496 companies active in the North Eastern Iran were clustered using support vector machine, artificial neural network and electromagnetic methods considering the indicators affecting the supply chain sustainability, and the best clustering method was determined. Next, the discriminant function was extracted and the results were analysed in order to discriminate between the dominant groups. Based on the obtained results, the studied manufacturing companies can be grouped into two dominant strategic categories of sustainable and unsustainable, so that 65% of the studied population is classified in the unsustainable group, with a score of 2.78 in the environmental dimension that puts them in an unfavourable situation. Finally, the results of this study, in addition to evaluating the company's performance in the field of sustainability, help managers in formulating appropriate strategies to improve the level of supply chain sustainability.

Keywords: supply chain sustainability; taxonomy; support vector machine; SVM; artificial neural network; electromagnetic; multilayer perceptron neural network.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2026.150956

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2026 Vol.53 No.1, pp.69 - 92

Received: 11 Jul 2023
Accepted: 19 Jul 2023
Published online: 06 Jan 2026 *

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