One piece flow, flow efficiency or how 1 x 7 is less than 7 x 1.
At Toyota in the 1960’s, they figured there are 7+1 wastes, see below picture:
Doing the math and balancing those, there is only one way to be cost-efficient and build a qualitative superior product that will outsmart the competition on the customers’ needs: one piece flow. There’s a nice video about it below.
Courtesy: Niklas Modig, Tedx
As you can see in the video, one-piece-flow is NOT necessarily or only a fully automated production line!