Corporate asset management: A semi-quantitative business-driven approach for evaluating improvement options

The corporate asset strategy determines whether assets should be enhanced by capital investment, maintained to upkeep their position or disposed. Thus, the corporate asset strategy connects corporate objectives to the available production technology, and consequently, the production asset base has to be developed to support the company s objectives. Even it is evident that physical assets are key elements in bringing the corporate strategy into action many asset owners still don't couple asset management with corporate strategy. This paper examines the influence of the market demand and competitive situation to the asset management decisions, especially operative investment decisions in the capital intensive manufacturing industry. It proposes a practical semi-quantitative approach to support the business-driven asset strategy decisions. The empirical research was carried out in co-operation between researchers and companies. The results indicate that a systematic strategy oriented analysis can be successfully combined to the corporate asset management decisions.