Corporate asset management and survey in Croatian companies

Today, in times of crises, Asset Management is gaining in importance. Industries and organizations are growingly concerned with understanding what combination of output, cost and reliability gives the best financial return to the business. Asset Management evolved from Maintenance Management to provide a holistic approach to managing the life of a physical asset. It is not focused only on maintenance and operations: today, Asset Management provides business framework and tools in order to improve and optimise the contribution of a physical asset to overall performance. Numerous international associations and institutes like The Institute of Asset Management - IAM London, EFNMS (Europe), GFMAM AM Council of Australia, ABRAMAN (Brazil), SMRP (USA), FIM (South America), GSMP (Arabian Gulf Region) and Croatian Maintenance Society, developed general principles to cover all stages of the asset management process including knowledge, governance, skills, practice, benchmarking, shareholders' value, etc. The common goal of all associations is transfer of knowledge through various programmes of education and certification for a new professional discipline - asset manager or asset governor. Asset Management is a concept intended to provide support to decision-makers to ensure efficiency and performance improvements; it draws from economics as well as engineering. Asset Management provides for the economic assessment of trade-offs between alternative improvements and investment strategies from the network or system-level perspective - that is, between modes and/or asset classes within modes. (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, 1996) [1]. The survey on implementation of Asset Management concepts in the Croatian companies was carried out on the sample of nine companies. It indicated that the Asset Management discipline is still in the early stage of development. The majority of companies set up organisational units, but integrated asset management activities are not present. Half of the surveyed companies designed their specific Asset Management strategies and policies but their implementation is at variable stage. (5 pages)