Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. (S.A.E.) Warrendale, USA, as the Registration Authority manages the application of the above mentioned International Standards and assigns a part of the WMI code to each country.
The other part of the code is assigned by national standards bodies of individual countries to vehicle manufacturers in their respective territories. This, together with the remaining parts of VIN assigned by vehicle manufacturers, ensures a unique identification of every vehicle manufactured anywhere in the world over a long period of time.

So far several vehicle or vehicle parts manufacturers from the Republic of Croatia have been registered with S.A.E.; they had been assigned a WMI or WPMI code, respectively, by the State Office for Standardization and Metrology as the then national standards body, taking into account the Croatian-specific part of the code. NOTE: Manufacturers of road vehicles or parts in the Republic of Croatia may submit an application for an identification number to the Croatian Standards Institute. In the application they should indicate their exact name and address, type of vehicle or part they manufacture and their annual vehicle production figure.