Work Cell

Ever wondered why the stove is in the kitchen instead of in, say, the garage or a guest bedroom? No, of course not, because why on earth would someone put their stove in the guest room? Makes no sense. The stove belongs in the kitchen, since that’s where the food is and where the cooking takes place. It would be really annoying to fill a pot with water in the kitchen, then carry it down the hall to the guest room so we could boil it, then head back to the kitchen to grab the box of mac n’ cheese, etc. Not to mention the fact that our houseguests probably wouldn’t be crazy about that arrangement, either.

Companies also tend to believe the stove belongs in the kitchen. They know that work gets completed more efficiently and accurately when all the people and resources needed to do the job are collocated as much as possible. This arrangement of people and stuff is called a work cell: it’s the setup of employees and resources who work on specific things in such a way that it promotes efficiency, collaboration, productivity, and other three-dollar words that make organizations’ hearts go pitter-pat.

Here’s a for-instance: if we own a car dealership and service center, we’re probably going to put our car sales folks in one area—near all the vehicles we’re selling, for example—while we put our mechanics and other service personnel in another. This way, a mechanic doesn’t have to walk across the showroom floor to get the new coolant sensor for that Mazda she’s fixing up in the shop. She saves time by having what she needs close to her work area, and since she’s also working near other mechanics, she’s got people to bounce ideas off of if it turns out the coolant sensor wasn’t the issue after all.

In our modern digital world, physical work cells aren’t always possible. But thanks to the internet and virtual technology, companies can attempt to create work cells that stretch across various geographic areas. Shared project management tools and electronic collaboration programs exist to help make virtual work cells happen, though some out there argue that there’s just no substitute for physical proximity.