I don't know if this is staged, but it's more or less what I'd do if I had one chainsaw per fifteen people to remove fallen trees, and even that's probably generous for the feds. It's basically the same logistical problem that led to the bucket brigade as a solution. You can't make the throughput any higher with more people, since you're limited by the input, but you can balance and reduce the workload on all of them, so you end up doing more in the long run. The most egregious thing is the three or four extra people near the end of the line.