Before picking the next order, this order must be completely picked and passed
on. It’s the same thing at the packing station. The packer takes the picked
order just brought to him, packs all the components and sends the packed order
to shipping. Then and only then will the packer take the next picked order and
pack it.
The antithesis of one-piece flow is batching. We tend to batch a lot in our
work, simply because we are under the illusion that batching is more efficient.
In fact, we are certain that somehow batching saves us time. Admittedly, in some cases batching is the only
way to go (I doubt anyone runs the dishwasher the instant one places a single
dirty plate in it - instead, we wait until the dishwasher is full and then we
run it, cleaning a batch of dirty dishes, not just one). At first, it may seem
counter-intuitive - but trust me, batching is a very bad habit, right up there
with carrying too much inventory.