SixOfSpades, are you describing an... sleeping workshop??? Do they exist were you come from?
I'm proposing that work "shops" gain the ability to define work "zones", just as tombs are currently defined from coffins, offices are defined from chairs, etc. Also, just as extra beds in dormitories currently allow multiple dwarves to sleep simultaneously, additional tables (each possibly requiring their own furnace/anvil, where appropriate) will enable parallel processing by multiple dwarves. The material costs for setup will be much the same (a Carpenter's shop with two subsidiary benches won't be much cheaper than three separate Carpenters'), but the benefits to be gained will be the shared work experience (particularly in the case of a master training apprentices) and the shared optional tools (all 3 benches can use the same set, with a small speed penalty to approximate dwarves needing the same tool at the same time).
As for augmenting a bed the way I was describing augmenting workshops, again, that's for ease of setup, especially in the early days of a fort, and especially for newbie players. The starting 7 can sleep on the ground just fine, the only reason they "need" a bed is for self-respect; they were worth the time/materials of constructing a wooden bedstead. Later on, they should get annoyed that their bed doesn't have any blankets. A couple of years down the road, they might complain that there are no mattresses--finally, a use for feathers. And so on. This system is simple & easy to learn (or, as
close to simple & easy as DF gets), and yet also allows for the full scope of realism & micromanaging, for players that want it.
Perhaps if we made it a bit more realistic, we could construct a fire pit/furnace object to place like furniture, along with a bellows or draft inlet (either are needed to process higher metals like iron) along with requirement for adjacent tiles (bellows would need to be next to the furnace)
[ZONE:FORGE]
[OBJECT_ALT:FIREPIT:1]
[ADJACENT:BELLOWS:FURNACE:1]
That's good. Zones (probably with a certain required number of benches) should also gain access to some industrial-scale augmentation that individual workshops won't get. For instance, I see the Firepit you suggested as a 2x2 construction placed anywhere within the zone, using twice the fuel of a regular Forge but usable by up to 6 dwarves at a time--and to build one, you need a Forge zone with at least 3 benches in it.