Workcell

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A workcell is an arrangement of resources in a manufacturing environment to improve the quality, speed and cost of the process. Workcells are designed to improve these by improving process flow and eliminating waste. They are based on the principles of Lean Manufacturing as described in The Machine That Changed the World by Womack, Jones and Roos.

Classical manufacturing approaches dictate that costs be lowered by breaking the process into steps, and ensuring that each of these steps minimizes cost and maximizes efficiency. This discrete approach will promote machines placed apart from each other to maximize the efficiency and throughput of each machine. The traditional accounting for machine capitalization is based on the number of parts produced, and this approach reinforces the idea of lowering the cost of each machine (by having them produce as many parts as possible.)

Increasing the number of parts adds waste in areas such as Inventory, Transportation, and Overspecialization of Labor.

Large amounts of excess Inventory will now accumulate between each machine in the process. In addition, the parts must now be transported between the machines. An increase in the number of machines involved also will reduce each worker's proficiency (since they will need to learn how to operate multiple machines, and they too will need to move between those machines.)

One of Lean Manufacturing's primary concern is to eliminate this type of waste. In the case above, the waste is primarily inventory and transportation costs. Lean focuses on optimizing the entire process as a whole. This enables a focus on the process of creating a finished product at the lowest cost (instead of lowering the cost of each step.)

The application of this approach is known as the workcell. Machines involved in building a product are placed next to each other to minimize transportation of both parts and people (an L-shaped desk with upper shelves is a good office example, which enables many office equipment to be within the reach of a worker). This will minimize waste in both transportation and in the storage of excess inventory.

The implementation of workcells can reduce costs by an order of magnitude (90%). Workcells are one technique that give lean production manufacturers such as Toyota great cost advantage.

In software development, the core of the workcell is the cross-functional team. This team differs from a more traditional waterfall team:

                   WATERFALL              AGILE, CROSS-FUNCTIONAL

 Team composition  Separate roles         Cross-functional
 Steps are         One at a time          Integrated
 Size of steps     Large                  Small
 Focus is on       Completing step        Quality
 Team work         Present only at        Present all the time
                   boundaries of tasks
 Results are       Historically poor      Fast, high-quality
                   slow, buggy