Minna Räikkönen

Corporate Asset Management for Industrial Companies: An Integrated Business-Driven Approach

This chapter outlines the main factors of industrial asset management: physical asset creation and improvements (investments), use of assets and maintenance of assets. We introduce approaches to improve decision making in asset management. This text covers the influence of various business environments, life cycle profit approach and uncertainty aspects on asset management. The general global problems especially in the capital intensive industry seem to be even over-capacity, low returns on investment and increase of turbulence. From the physical assets point of view, these requirements mean a need for a dynamic and continual life cycle management, optimal capacity development, improved investment planning, higher overall equipment effectiveness and lower maintenance costs of the equipment. These challenges are discussed in this chapter and some solutions are presented.

Enhancing the Resilience of Electricity Networks by Multi-stakeholder Risk Assessment: The Case Study of Adverse Winter Weather in Finland

Electricity networks in Finland are subject to adverse winter weather, particularly a combination of heavy snowfall with strong winds, causing electricity outages especially in the rural areas. The severe consequences of such events require that electricity distributors and the entire network of stakeholders establish a proactive risk management for achieving enhanced situational awareness during adverse weather events, efficient and effective recovering after electricity outage as well as improved preparedness against future events. This paper shows how a risk assessment performed with an Action Error Analysis (AEA) were conducted in order to enhance the resilience of electricity networks against adverse winter weather. This also encompassed an assessment of co-operation and communication structures about such risks. Adverse winter weather that took place in Pirkanmaa, in South-West Finland in November 2015, serves as a case study and laboratory for the assessments. The results of the AEA underscore the importance of co-operation and communication-related challenges that electricity distributors, rescue authorities and municipalities face in maintaining and obtaining a high level of resilience of electricity networks during and after heavy snowfalls. Against this background, novel ways and measures related to co-operation and communication of stakeholders to improve the resilience of electricity networks against future events are discussed.

Supporting Asset Management Decision-Making—New Value Creation Perspective

The current transition in value formation is forcing companies to seek new models and ways of operating and supporting their business and related investments. Therefore, the need for integrating the wider value perspective into the asset management and consequently, on asset management decision-making is increasing. Investments on engineered assets should be evaluated, selected and prioritized not only in terms of money but also with regard to sustainability, safety, quality, social acceptability and other typically intangible criteria. However, the evaluation of intangible and indirect impacts has rarely been included in the assessment up to now. This knowledge gap will be filled by this paper by proposing a preliminary framework for integrating wider value creation perspective into the asset management decision-making. It is aimed at decision-makers and intended to support decision-making on investments on engineered assets.

Empirical experiences of investment portfolio management in a capital-intensive business environment: a dimension of strategic asset management

The aim of this article is to describe the investment portfolio management method and how the method affected portfolio management from different strategic (corporate, business and functional) perspectives. This study focused on describing the investment portfolio management method (input and output information), which is tested for its practical relevance in the four case companies in the capital-intensive business environment. Investment portfolio management is a managerial and strategy intensive process, which aims to select the right set of investment projects for execution. The investment portfolio management method integrates technical, operational and strategic information to improve the quality of investment and business decisions. According to the study the investment portfolio management method applies knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to the collection of projects in order to meet or exceed the needs and expectations of the organisation’s investment strategy.