Decisions, Decisions: An Asset Management—Based Distribution System Framework

This article presents an operational framework that can implement asset management concepts for distribution systems. This operational framework should align well with distribution system goals (which include securing the rights of stakeholders). To this end, we first discuss who the distribution stakeholders are and methods of securing their rights. After describing the asset management implementation process, we consider the role of the rights of each stakeholder in the asset management system so that asset constraints and efficiency activities can be determined. Then we determine distribution system targets and the processes used to achieve those targets, and a distribution system framework is obtained based on asset management. In the next section, we describe operational activities in the managerial structure of a distribution system. Using this information, the total process of a distribution system based on asset management is determined. Finally, we discuss adapting the framework for both long- and short-term asset management.