he word "Dabbawala" in Marathi when literally translated, means "one who carries a

box". "Dabba" means a box (usually a cylindrical tin or aluminium container), while
"wala" is a suffix, denoting a doer of the preceding word[1]. The closest meaning of the
Dabbawala in English would be the "lunch box delivery man". Though this profession
seems to be simple, it is actually a highly specialized service in Mumbai which is over a
century old and has become integral to the cultural life of this city.

The concept of the dabbawala originated when India was under British rule. Many
British people who came to the colony did not like the local food, so a service was set up
to bring lunch to these people in their workplace straight from their home. Nowadays,
although Indian business men are the main customers for the dabbawalas, increasingly
affluent families employ them instead for lunch delivery to their school-aged children.
Even though the services provided might include cooking, it primarily consists of only
delivery either home-made or in that latter case, food ordered from a restaurant.

[edit] Background and the delivery chain

At 19,373 persons per km², Mumbai is India's most densely populated city with a huge
flow of traffic. Because of this, lengthy commutes to workplaces are common, with many
workers traveling by train.

Instead of going home for lunch or paying for a meal in a café, many office workers have
a cooked meal sent either from their home, or sometimes from a caterer who delivers it to
them as well, essentially cooking and delivering the meal in lunch boxes and then having
the lunch boxes collected and re-sent the next day. This is usually done for a monthly fee.
The meal is cooked in the morning and sent in lunch boxes carried by dabbawalas, who
have a complex association and hierarchy across the city.

A collecting Dabbawala on a bicycle

A collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas from homes or from the
dabba makers. The dabbas have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a
color or symbol. The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place, where he
and other collecting dabbawalas sort (and sometimes bundle) the lunch boxes into
groups. The grouped boxes are put in the coaches of trains, with markings to identify the
destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). The markings
include the rail station to unload the boxes and the building address where the box has to
be delivered.
At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala, who delivers them. The
empty boxes, after lunch, are again collected and sent back to the respective houses.

[edit] The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust

This service was originated in 1880. In 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche, started a lunch
delivery service with about 100 men.[2] 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 Carriers Association. The present President of the association
is Raghunath Medge. Nowadays, the service often includes cooking of foods in addition
to the delivery.

[edit] Economic analysis

It is estimated that the dabbawala industry grows by 5-10% each year.

Each dabbawala, regardless of role, gets paid about two to four thousand rupees per
month (around £25–50 or US$40–80).[3]

More than 175,000 or 200,000 lunch boxes get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to
5,000 dabbawalas, all with an extremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality.
According to a recent survey, there is only one mistake in every 6,000,000 deliveries,
statistically equivalent to a Six Sigma (99.9999) rating[4]

The BBC has produced a documentary on dabbawalas, and Prince Charles, during his
visit to India, visited them (he had to fit in with their schedule, since their timing was too
precise to permit any flexibility). Owing to the tremendous publicity, some of the
dabbawalas were invited to give guest lectures in top business schools of India, which is
very unusual. Most remarkably in the eyes of many Westerners, the success of the
dabbawala trade has involved no advanced technology.[5]

The New York Times reported in 2007 that the 125-year-old dabbawala industry
continues to grow at a rate of 5–10% per year.[6]

[edit] Low-tech and lean

A typical dabbawala lunch.

A dabba, or Indian-style tiffin box.

Although the service remains essentially low-tech, with the barefoot delivery men as the
prime movers, the dabbawalas have started to embrace modern information technology,
and now allow booking for delivery through SMS.[7] An on-line poll on the web site
ensures that customer feedback is given pride of place. The success of the system
depends on teamwork and time management that would be the envy of a modern
manager. Such is the dedication and commitment of the barely literate and barefoot
delivery men (there are only a few delivery women) who form links in the extensive
delivery chain, that there is no system of documentation at all. A simple colour coding
system doubles as an ID system for the destination and recipient. There are no multiple
elaborate layers of management either — just three layers. Each dabbawala is also
required to contribute a minimum capital in kind, in the form of two bicycles, a wooden
crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta-pyjamas, and the white trademark Gandhi topi
(cap). The return on capital is ensured by monthly division of the earnings of each unit.

[edit] Uninterrupted services

The service is uninterrupted even on the days of severe weather such as Mumbai's
characteristic monsoons. The local dabbawalas at the receiving and the sending ends are
known to the customers personally, so that there is no question of lack of trust. Also, they
are well accustomed to the local areas they cater to, which allows them to access any
destination with ease. Occasionally, people communicate between home and work by
putting messages inside the boxes. However, this was more common before the
accessibility of instant

Six sigma :

Mumbai’s 5000 plus Dabbawalas are world famous for their impeccable service
standards. They pick up lunch boxes/ tiffin carriers from over 2,00,000 homes/
apartments, deliver them to some 80,000 destinations and again ensure their safe return to
those homes/ apartments – all on the same day with each lap of journey en route
accomplished within the specified time limits. The people at work are not from any high
academic background; rather many of them are almost illiterate. They face the same
crowded pavements, on-road dense vehicular traffic and overloaded suburban trains,
which normal office goers often give excuses for their late comings.

Their way of doing business has, therefore, become a case study destination for every
management guru and B-school. CII arranged interface for who’s who of industry and business to
share great management lessons from them. A Dabbawala figured among a handful few from
India who got invitations to witness the marriage ceremony of Prince Charles. Sometime back,
there was also an All-Dabbawala ‘Deal Ya No Deal’ show in Sony Entertainment TV. They steal
all attention just because their service is of Six Sigma quality.

Every business concern is made of a number of interrelated processes. When inputs are made to
traverse through a process, they result into certain outputs (products & services) serving either
internal or external customers. A process is termed as industrial or commercial depending on
whether 80% or more of the values derived are from machinery or from human activity,
respectively.

No matter how perfect a process is, no product/ service will come conforming to exact
targeted specifications. It would always vary. However, when it varies within certain
Lower Specification Limit (LSL) and Upper Specification Limit (USL) as acceptable/
agreed to or specified by the customers, then it is considered to be defect free or quality
product/ service.

Further, every opportunity of delivering a product/ service is also wrought with an

opportunity for the occurrence of defect. When the Defects Per Million Opportunity
(DPMO) doesn’t exceed 3.4, the process is said to have met Six Sigma level. And
Mumbai Dabbawalas’ DPMO is less than 3.4 or precisely, it is 2!

‘Sigma (r)’ denotes ‘Standard deviation’ – a statistical measure of dispersion/ variance. It is the
positive square root of the arithmetic mean of the squares of deviations of given observations
from their arithmetic mean.
 Say, it is a midsummer and your organisation wants to hold a three-hour business plan meet of
your 100 sales persons. You look for a conference hall with right facilities and ambience,
especially the room temperature which should be maintained throughout at 22!10 C. And two
hotels in the city also promised the same. When measured at every half an-hour interval in the
one where you held your meet, it read as 18, 28, 30, 24, 20 and 18; the arithmetic mean value and
‘r’ being 23 and 4.7, respectively.

Whereas, had you gone to the other hotel, other things remaining same, the observed values of the
room temperature would have been say, 23, 22, 24, 22, 23 & 24. Although the mean was the
same 23, the ‘r’ being less at 0.8, the service of the second hotel was more qualitative and would
have given you more satisfaction. Hence the saying, ‘Company may celebrate mean but
customers are bothered by the variance’.

However, its process was still not conforming to Six Sigma level. With two observed values out
of six not meeting the customer expectations (22!10 C), the DPMO worked out to 333,333.33
(i.e., 2/6 multiplied by 1,000,000), which was hugely far from the required 3.4!

Benefits of higher Sigma level*

Sigma Level DPMO Cost of quality

2 308,537 Not applicable
3 66,807 25-40% of sales
4 6,210 (Industry Average) 15-25% of sales
5 233 5-15% of sales
6 3.4 (World class) < 1% of sales
*Source: ‘SIX SIGMA - The Breakthrough Management Strategy’ by Mikel Harry & R
Schroeder.

The figures in third column indicate that if, for example, you purchase a product at
Rs.10,000/- from a company operating at 4 Sigma Level, you are being made to pay
about Rs.1500-2500/- (i.e., 15-25% of sale price) towards the cost of inefficient processes
deployed by the company to manufacture the item. Putting it in other way, the company
concerned can reduce the price of the product by Rs.1500-2500/- if it fixes its faulty
processes or improves/ recreates the processes. This measure would also help the
company to increase its market share tremendously.

Past definition of Quality

• Conformance to standards irrespective of how they were met. Lot many hidden costs used to get
factored into the cost of the product/ service.

• High quality could be only at a high cost.

• Accordingly, it was difficult to gain more market share since price could not be reduced without
hitting the bottomline.

Present definition of Quality

Conformance to standards by continuous recreation of internal processes. This eliminates
the need to observe after production quality control and cost of rework associated, repair/
replacement of defective parts/ products, after sales warranty service, etc. This ultimately
reduces cost. The slogan now is ‘Being better is cheaper’. In other words, a quality
product or service need not necessarily be a costly one.

Why China made toffees, instant foods, stationery articles, aesthetic and art/ feng shui objects,
electronic toys, gift, decorative, utility items, etc., have flooded the world market? Are we all
purchasing them just because they are cheap? Our Diwali has become whose Diwali anyway?
When do we wake up to the reality?

Says W Edwards Deming; “Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure to meet
customer expectations are related to deficiencies in systems and processes ... rather than
the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering
individuals to do better.”

I have a Maruti 800 of 1992 make. First time when I had a punctured tyre, I went to a
wayside repair shop. A boy fixed it. After a few months, I observed that the tread on the
said tyre was getting unevenly worn off. I took the car to a wheel alignment shop. The
man on the job reset a nut that was wrongly set with its groove-side out. To put an end to
this sort of problem for good, subsequent models came with the flat side of this category
of nuts permanently blocked.

So, companies be alert! If you wish to achieve the efficiency of Mumbai’s Dabbawalas,
‘Don’t fix your employees for any deficiency in their performance standards in meeting
customer expectations, rather take their help to identify the faults in your systems and
procedures and fix them.’

t telecommunications.