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The arrivals column acts as the throttle by which we constrain the amount of work that can arrive to our system at any given time. It is the mechanism by which we match the rate of arrivals in our process to the rate of departures. The matching of these rates is what is going to yield process predictability. And, The arrivals column acts as our "commitment" point to start new work. The implication being that when new work is committed to, we expect it will flow completely through the process and depart the system. It is only when work departs our system that customer value can truly be recognized and our predictability be assessed.