What Is One Piece Flow In Lean?

Intro & Summary
What is one piece flow in Lean? If you adopt the concept of one piece flow in your life, it will literally change everything for you. So get ready to be at least twice as effective as you are today if you’re willing to implement this blog post. 

So what is one piece flow? What is this concept that J money is talking about? How can you start with one piece flow in your work and on your project, and what are the benefits? Well, we’re going to cover all that. So stay with us. When we’re talking about one piece or one process, or one piece or one process flow, the first thing you’ve got to understand is what is the piece that is the key—you can’t do one piece flow, can’t do one process flow if you don’t know the piece. So I want you to imagine four rows of numbers from one to five, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, all the way over to the fourth column. Which one is faster? Doing a process 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the second process or doing process 1, 1, 1, 1, and then doing process 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5? Right, which one is faster? Well, I’ll tell you what happened.

Before we came to this earth, God, angels, and whatever it is that existed beforehand, or nature or the universe, taught us that batching was faster—meaning the 1, 1, 1, 1. When we were born, the first thing the doctor told us when they slapped us on the backside to get us to breathe was that batching was faster. Elementary school, they taught us that. Middle school, they taught us that. High school and college, they told us that. When you moved out of the house, your parents taught you that. When you first got your job, your employer told you that batching was faster—everyone thinks that the 1, 1, 1, 1 is faster. But it’s not, most of the time. Well, the majority of the time.

Why One Piece Flow Is Faster Than Batching
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re reviewing a submittal. And that submittal requires you to study the drawings, then to review the submittal, then get a second set of eyes, then transmit that to the architect, and then do a page flip and make sure that you get your comments back. So what is faster? Doing one submittal step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or researching the drawings for 1, 2, 3, 4 on all of the step ones, and then doing the reviews, and then doing the second set of eyes, then transmitting it, then sending them all to the architect or the designers all at once—which one is faster? It is faster, in two main ways, for you to do one process or one piece, which is that submittal at a time.

Let me tell you why. First and foremost, that one submittal (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) gets delivered to the designers sooner, so now they can start. So now the rhythm has started sooner. The other thing is the overall process time is shorter for one process, one piece flow than it is for batching because when you batch something, you have mental context switching, additional motion, movement, or transportation. This is absolutely key for us in construction. If you’re doing a submittal, do it one at a time. If you’re hosting a meeting, do one at a time. Plan it, do the meeting, finish the meeting one at a time. If you’re doing a task, do it one at a time. Everything you do needs to be done with as little distraction as possible, one piece or one process at a time if you want to save time and be fully effective.

Fun Example To Understand One Piece Flow
In fact, if you want something fun, right, I am going to suggest a game. If you want any additional clarification or want this specific game, just mention this in the comments of this blog post. I will respond back to you personally—me, myself, not an assistant. Okay, but if you want to have some fun with this, get 20 pieces of paper, 20 envelopes, and 20 stamps. Put them in a pile, and then get another set of 20 pieces of paper, 20 envelopes, and 20 stamps, and put them in another pile. Time yourself: in the first pile, go fold all the papers all at once, then go stuff them all at once. Then go ahead and lick (which is super gross) all of these envelopes all at once, then put the stamp on them all at once and time yourself.

If you then want to look at one piece or one process flow, go take one piece of paper, fold it, stuff it in the envelope, lick it (which again is still super gross, it’s just you get to do them at separate times), and then put a stamp on it, and then go to the next one, and then the next one, and time yourself. Every time you do it, if you’re going the same speed, the one piece or one process flow will be faster, and you will have a visual of what I’m talking about. It’s a really great game that you can play anywhere. In fact, I love this so much that I’m going to link you to three videos. One of the videos shows one piece flow. The other one shows the concept of large batch versus small batch. The third one shows the envelope game that I just described. But I highly recommend you try it out, especially if you want to have some fun or you’re presenting in front of a group.

How To Improve Efficiency & Productivity By Following A One Piece Flow
One story that I’d like to tell you before I move on: there’s a story of us, and that story of us is really the story of you liking and subscribing to this blog and commenting whenever you need something. Our story is one of continuous learning, continuous improvement, and engagement, where you get what you need continually in your role—the support that you want, the support you deserve.

But really, in all seriousness, there’s another story that I want to tell you about where we went to a company that was having difficulty completing their inspections on time. They were working, on average, about two and a half hours late every day, and they were about 40 inspection reports behind. What we found out was the team would go do an inspection, and then not do the paperwork. They moved that to the end of the day, then did another one, another one, another one. They would go do four inspections, and they would batch all of the reports at the end of the day. What they didn’t know was that every time they did that, they added 15 minutes to 45 minutes of context switching for each of those delayed activities because they didn’t finish it one at a time.

So we suggested to them: Hey, you’re 40 reports behind, and every person is working an average of two and a half hours late. This is what we recommend: go do the inspection, do the documentation immediately, finish it, transmit it, and then go to the next project. They went from being able to do four inspections a day, working two and a half hours late each per person and being 40 inspection reports behind, to now being able to do five total inspections a day in the proper timeframe, being able to go home to their families with zero inspections behind. This is the power of one piece flow, one process flow, because when you move something to the end of the day and don’t finish it right away, you’ve added 15 to 45 minutes. You are probably seeing two to four hours of waste, if not two to six hours of waste, every day from batching and context switching. We must get into the concept of one piece, one process flow.

How To Practice One Piece Flow In Construction
Alright, so here are some practical examples. When you do something, do it one at a time. When we are working on a construction project, the way we work in one piece or one process flow is by zone. The zone is your piece, the zone is your process or the process within that zone. So your trade partners get to learn this mindset: we are going to plan the work in that zone, we are going to build the work in that zone right the first time, and we are going to finish the work in that zone as we go. We are not going to go to a different zone until we are ready. That is what one process flow looks like in construction. In addition to the meeting, the inspection, and the submittal examples—do one thing, one piece at a time.

Importance Of Planning Work Ahead Of Time
The other thing that everybody needs to know is that whether you’re doing a submittal, or you’re doing a meeting, or you’re doing an inspection, or you’re doing a zone, there has to be the time that it takes for you to do the work, also with a little bit of a buffer at the end—a little bit of a break. So if a crew plans their work, then does the work, there should be a little bit of time to clean, demobilize, inspect, do training, make sure that they’re five essing