In the previous post, I discussed the reasons for having the flight department operate as a normal business unit. If the business unit is a profit center, producing something or delivering a service for which the corporation derives revenue, reporting metrics are clearly defined and universally accepted. What does the deliverable cost per unit to produce, and what is the revenue per unit. Such metrics demonstrate whether the business unit is actually returning a profit. Functions such as Legal, Human Resources, or IT (which are cost centers rather than revenue generators) have been around long enough that within each of those corporate functions there are clearly measurable goals; the cost to deliver the end-product can be measured and reported.