This paper studies the choices or settings of the continuous production system in each manufacturing decision area using data collected through structured questionnaire from twenty executives working in manufacturing plants. It also investigates how choices made in manufacturing decision areas impact competitive priorities. In general, plants use different settings and in cases where same settings are used, they seem to deviate from ideal choice (for continuous production system) reported in literature. Further, it is observed that some settings improve multiple competitive priorities while others show trade off among competitive priorities. © 2008 IEEE.