Every human activity has a process flow. From cleaning the kitchen after dinner to completing $4 billion refinancing, there is a series of steps that flow from beginning to end. This is especially evident in the legal and business activities of every organization.

Certain members of an organization understand core aspects of a process, but very few people have a solid overview of the entire process. In a steel manufacturing plant, a lineworker will deeply understand his or her part of the production process, without necessarily needing a full appreciation of the entire process. Whereas, an outside regulator or member of the board of directors would greatly benefit from a bird’s-eye view of the overall process without all the detail.

One Page Thinking has prepared a sample process flow diagram that depicts the flow of metal through the various production areas and key machines used in a steel plant:

Raw Materials Assembly > Steel Casting > Hot Mill > Cold Mill > Finishing Lines > Scrap Handling > Loading and Transportation

A well-structured process flow diagram is essential to communicate efficiently to a broad audience and worth its weight in gold to get everyone on the same page.

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Netflix streams 250 million hours of video per day to 200 million paying subscribers in 190 countries. At this scale, providing quality entertainment in a matter of seconds to subscribers is a stunning achievement. To reach subscribers, Netflix’s video files get passed from one part of the internet to another—i.e., the places where the internet's many pipes connect (i.e., internet connection points or IXPs). These hand-off points are not built to handle as much traffic as Netflix generates. To alleviate this problem, Netflix loads thousands of proprietary boxes called Open Connect Appliances (OCAs) with all its video files (i.e., nearly the entire Netflix catalog of its offerings or 7.5TB of data) and places these OCAs inside each data center of the local cable operators/internet service providers (ISPs), such as Comcast, Verizon and Cox Communications. By having Netflix videos widely distributed in data centers around the world, Netflix traffic does not burden the internet at large, or the hand-off points between different parts of the internet. One Page Thinking has created diagram of the Netflix content delivery network.