Do you every wonder why people batch process?

I had an "ah ha" moment while making corrections to a spreadsheet this morning.  In the Lean experience one would suggest that walking in manufacturing / service (or in this case jumping cell-to-cell in the spreadsheet) is waste.  You should move all of the tasks within the grasp of the operator so as to minimize motion, resulting in as close to an efficient process as possible.  As I went through my task correcting the spreadsheet, I now am asking myself "how effective is this (jumping cell-to-cell)?"

Here is what I found.  Though I was meeting cycle time making corrections, I found myself batch processing.  Meaning that instead of making all of the corrections at once in a given cell and moving onto another, I would make one "type" of correction in each cell, then come back to make another batch set of corrections.

You really don't know what I am up to, but lets just clear the thought here.  I am not able to do "find and replace" because of the extensive coding I am doing in the cell formula.  I cannot create a formula, highlight it, and extend it down the column like one would do to repeat a formula with for each preceding cell.  (I hope you know what I mean.)

The "ah ha" moment came when I realized I was processing small batches at a time because the work content was too complicated to do it right in a one-piece-flow process.  This "ah ha" moment immediately directed me to what I have seen in manufacturing.  Team members batching even though they know very well the Standardized Work instruction calls for each of the elemental tasks be completed before you start the next part.  Have we made the process too complicated?  Is this why industry Guru's (I will have to go back and research which of them prescribed this) insisted on breaking the process down to such a simplistic short set of operations for an individual team member? (Something like a vacuum cleaner example comes to mind . . . Professor Susan S. can you help me out here?)

So, my latest mission (to add on to the many I have stacked on my shoulders) is to observe team members doing their tasks.  I hope to understand why some may have chosen to deviate from the declared process.  The outcome may be that if you see them batch, perhaps the work content is too complicated.  Nothing like a visual factory to bring out the Why? Why? Why? . . .