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1. Introduction
Asset Management (AM) varies in interpretation and definition. In the financial sector, it refers to the management of financial assets. In capital intensive industries AM is used to identify how an industrial organization deals with the management of its physical assets through their life cycle to achieve its strategy. The output generated with these assets should justify their ownership. Development of new and extended bodies of knowledge and frameworks incorporating a multi-disciplinary view is underway ([22] Frolov et al. , 2009). A growing number of industry groups, professional societies and research organizations that consider AM are forming, for example ([31] IPWEA, 2006; [15] CIEAM, 2008; [7] Asset Management Council, 2009) is evidence of an increasing emphasis on the area of AM. AM may be regarded as an essential technical as well as a business process, and is increasingly considered as a contributor to an organization's objectives through managing asset performance with the intention of achieving the competitive strategy. The development of a discipline called AM seems to be based on the idea of a collection of management activities among the organization's activities that together manage these assets. The [7] Asset Management Council (2009) defines AM as: "The life cycle management of physical assets to achieve the stated outputs of the enterprise". The AM system may subsequently be defined as: "The system that plans and controls the asset-related activities and their relationships to ensure the asset performance that meets the intended competitive strategy of the organization" ([19] El-Akruti and Dwight, 2010). As a control system AM involves a set of planning and control activities at different organizational levels. This definition provides an integrated view of the AM system within the whole organization's management system.
It is proposed that there are two main aspects of AM when it is defined in this way: the life cycle management of physical assets and the holistic system control of asset-related activities directed at achieving the organizational strategy. These two aspects are not easily separated when analysing AM.
Life cycle management can be considered to involve AM activities associated with an existing organization ([3] Amelsberg, 2002; [14] Charles and Alan, 2005). Typically such an organization is initially concerned with the utilization phase of these existing assets. Any decision concerning...