The speed of changes and the intensity of competition between enterprises in different industries have made them face resource constraints. The sustainability and survival of organizations depend on achieving a competitive advantage in cost, quality, innovation and delivery simultaneously. Moreover, obtaining the competitive advantage is through identifying areas and sectors where the enterprises have superiority. Accordingly, for the first time, the study tried to design and explain these factors in the Iranian food industry. The research was applied in terms of purpose, descriptive-survey considering data collection, and its tools were interviews and questionnaires. The population of the study was Khuzestan food industries. Thompson and Strickland's Model, as the basis, was used to carry out the study. This model has defined critical success factors in seven different aspects, with some indices specified for each one. In this study, the ability to innovate in the product, the ability to use update information, quality raw material, the ability to produce order, internet distribution networks, low distribution cost, the provision of appropriate and timely services to the customers, innovation in products, experience and expertise of the management had a significant effect on the performance of SMEs. There was an exception for this that was fast, explicit market evaluation techniques, and the ability to make changes in previous products with no effects on the performance of industries.
