I agree that this system is getting tedious.

The problem in here lies from the first concept design. SE designed a content where they want the community to be more socialize, FC have something to do together and also from players requested. SE did success create and delivered the idea and the concept, but the way they made it work is wrong.

Not only the basic explanation of how Company Workshop works is no different than a delivery quest (take Ixali daily delivery quest as an example): you make the item, delivery them to the machine NPC. The only different is you are not doing this alone but you may ask other people inside the FC to help you fasten the progress. And it has became a bit far from what they created from the first idea.

And to unlock the next phase of the project, they forced users to have a party of at least 4 players in order to unlock the next phase. What for?

- For being social or communicate from this? No, it isn't. This is forcing the users that "you have to do that, no excuse". For this, SE has failed the "communicate" part with the players.
- SE may have think about this system for big FC and for small FC as well (my FC only have 6 active members, and 2-3 online per day), and they made outsider can join the party in order to help. But what for? Why you have to come a long way like that? Why not make at least 1 player to pushes the phase and as many person as the party can take to also pushes the phase? For communicate or social? If we want to we will ask around if anyone have some free time that want to join in and watch some "cool" cutscene and then they can leave and continue their personal things. Not including they have a long way to travel to the city-state, locate the Wards, and then locate the Plots, go inside the house, etc. too many actions for just one action that only cost few seconds while the whole process before that require more than few seconds.
- Do we really need 4 person in order to press one button on the machine command board for it to active? Is that button really that hard to press for one person?
- It's really bothering the person that we have to ask them to forbid their activities to come inside our house, our workshop to join the party so we can unlock the next phase. Bothering them from their plays and their activities.
- It doesn't create any social when asking for a party of 4, because when the lead party finish unlock the phase, the other will just farewell and leave the party. So where is the communicate in here? We don't see any chit chat "Oh! Wow! Isn't that cool?" or "What will it do?". I have seen some sentence like "Is that it?" or "What next?", and that gave them the anger and i cannot ask them for help the next time.

tl;dr: SE failed from the concept idea of Company Workshop.