It is hard to find an organisation that still survives after 120 years, let alone survive with same consistant work culture and ethics. Further more, it is still to find an organisation using the same age old processes and practices and still deliver on customer satisfaction. Yes, we are talking about the internationally renowed, our very own Mumbai Dabbawallas. There story is indeed not just an inspiration but a learning for many of us in managing an organisation.
For those of you who may not know, the Mumbai Dabbawallas is a specialised community of tiffin carriers working as an organisation. They have their own delivery system that collects hot food in lunch boxes from the residences of workers in morning, delivering them to the workplace and then collecting and returning the same to the residences in the evening. The Dabbawallas predominantly use bicycles and the railway trains while carrying loads on big trolleys and overhead carries on foot. They are also used by meal suppliers in Mumbai, where they ferry ready-cooked meals from central kitchens to the customers and back.
The Start:
It is said that the idea for a lunch delivery service came up about 130 years ago when a Parsi banker wanted home cooked food at his work place. Slowly the service became very popular but it ran in a very organised manner. It was in year 1890 that the visionary Mahadeo Havaji Bachche saw the opportunity and launched it with a 100 men. Slowly and steadily, the demand for Dabbawallas grew and they become famous and indespensible part of Mumbai life.
In 1930, he informally attempted to unionize the dabbawallas. Later, a charitable trust was registered in 1956 under the name of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust. The commercial arm of this trust was registered in 1968 as Mumbai Tiffin Box Supplier's Association – MTBSA or popularly as Dabbawallas.
The System:
The Dabbawallas are very famous for error-free delivery of tiffins back and forth, every day on time. They are globally renowned for thier excellence in logistics for managing this service and is often cited as an outstanding example. In fact in 2010, Harvard Business School added the case study “The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time to their compendium for its high level of service with a low-cost and simple operating system”. It is also 'claimed' by few that the system is as accurate as Six Sigma – a highly accurate statistic with less than 3.4 errors per ten lakh of transactions.
The service is run 6 days a week for about 25 working days a month. Each Dabbawallah is assigned upto 30 customers in a specific geographical area. Each Dabbawallah visits a pre-assigned and fixed route and carries lunch boxes to & fro the nearest railway station. The tiffin box has to be ready in the morning pick up time or else the Dabbawalla will leave for the next house. Around 10-15 Dabbawallah are organised as a team supervised by a Mukkaddam and often multiple teams may operate at a railway station. At the railway station, proper sorting is done of the tiffins based on a unique coding system. They are then transported as per the destination railway station in carts. Again the sorting is done and tiffins distributed to area specific Dabawallas. In the evening the entire process is repeated in reverse.
At the heart of this system the is unique coding system on boxes which helps identify a tiffin's box source and destination. It is an age old simple, universal method, understood by every person in the long chain of delivery where the box changes hands multiple times. The coding system evolved through time as the city expanded and demand grew. The essence of the codification system is that it clearly identifies the origin of the lunch box, the associated collection team member, the destination, the corresponding delivery team member, the delivery location, destination, location building identification and the floor number.
The Culture:
Most tiffin-wallahs are related to each other, belong to the Varkari sect of Maharashtra and come from the same small village near Pune. Today daily over 2 lakh tiffin boxes are handled by approximately 5,000 Dabbawallas. The Dabbawalas have a remarkably flat organization with just three tiers. The ,5000 Dabbawallas are overseen by 800 Mukaddams who supervise, sort tiffins, resolve disputes, maintain payment records, etc. There is a Panch Committe of 13 members who are the administrators and decison makers for the organisation.
The approx. 5000 Dabbawallas are semi-literate and believe in employing people from their own communities and often village elders recommend a relative from their village. The Dabbawallas share a strong bonding and trust between themselves. Here nobody is an employer or an employee and each dabbawala considers himself as a shareholder and entrepreneur. All Dabbawallas traditionally sport a kurta and a Gandhian cap or topi. The organisation is very strict on punctuality and rarely does anyone take any break. They are also very strict when it comes to consuming addictive and tobacco products which are banned. The organisation has never seen any strike in its 120 year old history. Over years, the Dabbawallas have also been involved in spreading important social messages and working for social causes.
Learnings:
The legacy of Dabbawallas has stood against the test of time for decades. They are today spreading valuable lessons on how ordinary things can be done extraordinarily by sheer discipline, committment and simplicity. There are many factors that makes this legacy great like strong bonding, trust, equality, sense of ownership, ethics, age old method of delivery and so on. What makes it special is that this level of service is made available at a price which is very affortable even for a middle class person. No wonder that Prince Charles and Richard Branson are among their fans. In an age of technology where big business houses have ventured into logistics business, none have managed come close enough to match to the service levels of our traditional Dabbawallas. And it looks well set to amaze us even in the 21st century.
