The Theory of Exploitation as a Support for Management Accounting in an Enterprise

In each company operating on the market, various business processes are implemented: production, logistics, warehouse, marketing, HR and payroll and many others. In enterprises with a high organizational culture, these processes are always measured; various indicators related to the effectiveness and efficiency of these processes are measured and analyzed, and on this basis management decisions are made for the entire enterprise. The aim of this work was to verify the assumption that by properly defining the process of “exploitation” of technical objects (understood as the combination of the processes of operation and maintenance), it is possible to obtain information not only about the effectiveness of this process itself, but also about other business processes carried out in companies. For this purpose, the so-called “exploitation states” characteristic of technical objects used in two different types of small enterprises, i.e., mechanical workshops and taxi enterprises, were defined. Then, in two such workshops and three taxi companies, the time spent by the objects in defined states was measured, and the results were analyzed. We found significant differences in these values even for companies of a similar size and nature. After discussing the results with the owners of the companies, it was found that the differences resulted from different visions of the functioning of each company and—which is very important—their context. In the following, it was shown that properly defining and measuring the exploitation states of technical objects can be useful for improving not only “technical” processes but also most of the business processes carried out in enterprises.