Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand the configuration of a job production system with reference to manufacturing decision areas. The aim is to identify the process specific decisions for job shop and the non‐process specific decisions that are influenced by other contextual factors.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study research approach is used in the present paper to investigate the decisions of five manufacturing companies that satisfy the characteristics of job production system. Data are collected from case company's products, order winners and choices made in manufacturing decision areas. The paper uses within case and cross‐case analysis to identify various patterns in the data, with a view to meeting the required research objectives.

Findings

The present paper identifies a number of decisions specific to job shop. Further, many non‐process specific decisions are seen to be influenced by competitive priorities (order winner), strategic orientation of manufacturing (stages in H‐W model), top management and size of the company. After the study of the case companies, it is also observed that the companies employing a job production system may have high product complexity.

Practical implications

The findings derived from this research would facilitate practitioners in understanding both process specific and non‐process specific decisions for the job production system. The observation that the job shops can also use progressive practices, the same as other shops, to gain competitive advantage in the market could be very useful for practicing managers.

Originality/value

This exploratory research contributes to the existing theory in manufacturing decision areas for job production systems.