Anyone in an organization can carry out maintenance improvement. The mission of the maintenance department is to reduce the need for maintenance. The department should keep getting better and better at maintaining the building, factory or fleet it is responsible for.

A story from James, a maintenance professional at the National Institutes of Health, shows how you can solve many problems by slowing down to look closely.

For years, James had been getting 50 calls a month to replace bent door hinges. A carpenter was more or less permanently assigned to the job. 

Walking through the building one day, James noticed that someone had jammed a wooden wedge between the door and the jamb to hold the door open. He quickly realized the cause of the bent hinges.

His fix included installing door holders (where codes allowed) and placards saying that the doors must be kept closed (where codes required). The new failure rate plummeted to 5 calls per month. The savings almost totally free a carpenter for other work.