Another problem with organizing similar professional specialties and similar manufacturing equipment together into departments is that a product being made for a customer does not live in just one department. It must move across departments to become what the customer wants. Engineering, purchasing, and accounting are all located in different departments. Yet many value streams cross through these departments, causing a delay each time a process enters a new department. In a one-piece flow, you physically line up the processes in the sequence that will produce the customer's order in the
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