Bench in manufacturing

I gave a call to one of my friend some yrs back and asked what ur doing for the day. Her answer put me to loud laughter - Bench: the word that I came across after a long time of school bench.... well that day when I understood what it ment, it kin' of put me to surprise how does one put so much of a cost to keep some one idle...what are the plus and minus... thought it was only in software.. man believe me it is so in manufacturing sector tooo these days... why is it happening here... I tried to take a closer look..............scarcity of resource, increasing delivery demand wanting the need for a short term resource, growth rate giving an assurance that the future business would be mine and start planning the resource, well it is peanuts to the avg business would fetch to the company right....adv to some as u get lot of time for doing nothing and get paid in thousands... for some pain in the neck as it is hard to take the monotonity of checking few mails, getting on to certain business network and then how much of stratergy work and self learning....not for some one who likes inventions, risks, technical, semi tech jobs....personality affected and relationship, self esteem sometime soar........well up to the individual to look at the plus or minus of it......and how to convert the minus to plus.....Its even more painful when u have done the budgetting for the self, know things are on the way and understand that things will fall in place for the self but wait indefinetly on the bench.........Even the manufacturing is on the bench.........Hang on