Does Section 654 of the California Criminal Code require a defendant to be punished for each crime committed in pursuit of the same criminal objectives?

Section 654 provides: "(a) An act or omission that is punishable in different ways by different provisions of law shall be punished under the provision that provides for the longest potential term of imprisonment, but in no case shall the act or omission be punished under more than one provision." If all of the crimes are merely incidental to, or are the means of accomplishing or facilitating one objective, a defendant may be punished only once. (People v. Perry (2007) 154 Cal.App.4th 1521, 1525.) "If, however, a defendant had several independent criminal objectives, he may be punished for each crime committed in pursuit of each objective, even though the crimes shared common acts or were parts of an otherwise indivisible course of conduct." (Ibid.)