
18 • e Lean CFO: Architect of the Lean Management System
FLOW EQUALS REAL PRODUCTIVITY
e ultimate goal of Lean is single piece ow, which simply means
working on one product at a time from start to nish before begin-
ning to work on the next product. If each process step in a value stream
achieves single piece ow, then the entire value stream achieves single
piece ow.
e reality is that pure single piece ow is dicult to do because of
variability that exists in processes. ere are three types of variability
that exist in all value streams: the variability of demand, the variabil-
ity of cycle times, and the variability of waste. Lean prac