The Maintenance Department's Contribution to the Success of the Enterprise

Within organizations there are experts in many disciplines. As the organization gets bigger, this aspect becomes both more important and more economically smart. Expertise is important because small mistakes can be enormously expensive, particularly in a large organization. As an organization grows, the probability of issues arising becomes larger because the population of events is also larger.

For example, having an expert in managing cash to squeeze the most interest out of deposits and reduce incoming float (and increase outgoing float), is not very important in a company with a $1,000,000. The difference of even 2% in interest over that amount would amount to less than $55 a day (which would not pay for the effort). But for a large enterprise with a billion dollars, the same advantage of having an expert get 2% more could be $55,000 a day (which will pay for the effort). The same considerations apply to risk management, energy conservation, safety, and a myriad of other areas.

Every one of these experts makes a contribution to the success of the enterprise by lending their expertise to the problems and opportunities of that company. Legal experts strive to contribute to the company by protecting it on the legal front. Risk managers contribute by eliminating the probability of catastrophes, and adequately insuring the company in case the worst does happen.

Companies occasionally ignore their own experts. Sometimes the...