Supply chain Case Study

Four thousand five hundred semi-literate dabbawalas collect and deliver 175,000 packages within hours.
What should we learn from this unique, simple and highly efficient 120-year-old logistics system?
The Dabbawalas who provide a lunch delivery service in Mumbai have been in the business for over 100
years. In 1998, Forbes Global magazine conducted an analysis and gave them a Six Sigma rating of
efficiency.

The system the dabbawalas have developed over the years revolves around strong teamwork and strict
time-management. At 9am every morning, home-made meals are picked up in special boxes, which are
loaded onto trolleys and pushed to a railway station. They then make their way by train to an unloading
station. The boxes are rearranged so that those going to similar destinations, indicated by a system of
coloured lettering, end up on the same trolley. The meals are then delivered—99.9999% of the time, to
the right address.Harvard Business School has produced a case study of the dabbawalas, urging its
students to learn from the organisation, which relies entirely on human endeavour and employs no
technology."A model of managerial and organizational simplicity" says  Ck Prahlad for the dabbawalas
Six sigma performanceEvery day, battling the traffic and crowds of Mumbai city, the Dabbawalas, also
known as Tiffin wallahs,  unfailingly delivered thousands of dabbas to hungry people and later returned
the empty dabbas to where they came from. The Dabbawalas delivered either home-cooked meals from
clients' homes or lunches ordered for a monthly fee, from women who cook at their homes according to
the clients' specifications. The Dabbawalas' service was used by both working people and school
children.In 1998, Forbes Global magazine, conducted a quality assurance study on the Dabbawalas'
operations and gave it a Six Sigma efficiency rating of 99.999999; the Dabbawalas made one error in six
million transactions.In 1998, two Dutch filmmakers, Jascha De Wilde and Chris Relleke made a
documentary called 'Dabbawallahs, Mumbai's unique lunch service'.In July 2001, The Christian Science
Monitor, an international newspaper published from Boston, Mass., USA, covered the Dabbawalas in an
article called 'Fastest Food: It's Big Mac vs. Bombay's dabbawallahs'.In 2002, Jonathan Harley, a
reporter, did a story on the Dabbawalas with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). In 2003,
BBC also aired a program on the Dabbawalas, which was part of a series on unique businesses of the
world.In 2003, Paul S. Goodman and Denise Rousseau, both faculty at the Graduate School of Industrial
Administration of Carnegie Mellon University, made their first full-length documentary called 'The
Dabbawallas'. Instead of asking how knowledge in developing countries can help less developed
countries, this film focuses on how developed countries can learn from less developed countries".Back
home, the Dabbawalas were invited to speak at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) meets and at
leading Indian business schools such as IIM, Bangalore and Lucknow.
The organisation structure and the working style..

The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers' Charity Trust had a very flat structure with only three levels, the
Governing Council, the Mukadams and the Dabbawalas . From the Governing Council, a President and a
Secretary were elected. The Governing Council held meetings once a month which were attended by the
Mukadams and Dabbawalas. At these meetings, the Dabbawalas discussed their problems and explored
possible solutions. The problems could be with the police, municipal corporation, customers, etc. They
also adjudicated disputes among Dabbawalas using their own system. The Trust collected Rs.15 from
each Dabbawala every month to maintain a welfare fund...

Uninterrupted services
Would you expect your tiffin man to deliver tiffin to you on a heavy monsoon day?
The answer would be No.  Except for people using the dabbawalas service. Because they have  a record
of 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.
Team work
The entire system depends on teamwork and meticulous timing. Tiffins are collected from homes
between 7.00 am and 9.00 am, and taken to the nearest railway station. At various intermediary
stations, they are hauled onto platforms and sorted out for area-wise distribution, so that a single tiffin
could change hands three to four times in the course of its daily journey.
At Mumbai's downtown stations, the last link in the chain, a final relay of dabbawalas fan out to the
tiffins' destined bellies. Lunch hour over, the whole process moves into reverse and the tiffins return to
suburban homes by 6.00 pm.

Elegant logistics
In the dabbawalas' elegant logistics system, using 25 kms of public transport, 10 km of footwork and
involving multiple transfer points, mistakes rarely happen. According to a Forbes 1998 article, one
mistake for every eight million deliveries is the norm. How do they achieve virtual six-sigma quality with
zero documentation? For one, the system limits the routing and sorting to a few central points.
Secondly, a simple color code determines not only packet routing but packet prioritising as lunches
transfer from train to bicycle to foot.So friends what all can you learn from them? Aren't they great..!!!
In this high technologically advanced time these people are working absolutely without it. They have an
excellent supply chain, they dont even know what it means. Most of the people working with them are
semi-literate but still they read the tiffin code correctly and deliver it Their attitude of competitive
collaboration is equally unusual, particularly in India. The operation process is competitive at the
customers' end but united at the delivery end, ensuring their survival since a century and more. Is their
business model worth replicating in the digital age is the big question.There are many more things to
learn from them...What do you say?

Mumbai Dabbawala: Customer Service Excellence of Six Sigma Quality Without Technology . Mumbai’s
semi-literate dabbawalas, suburban trains, and packed home food (tiffins) to a global case study on Six
Sigma. He is the author of ‘Dabbawala of Mumbai : Masters of Supply Chain Management’. He has done
a case study on the dabbawala’s logistics and supply chain management efforts and has made more than
200 presentations in India and abroad. YourStory captures parts of his speech at IIT-Delhi at the E-
Summit, 2012. An adapted version of the speech is presented here. The food is cooked at home. Tiffin is
yours. They [dabbawalas] will simply deliver it from your home to your workplace before lunch time and
deliver the empty tiffin box back in the evening at your home as well. Why would you want dabbawala
to carry your tiffin? There are two reasons. One is that the Mumbai local trains have lines extending 60-
70 km and two, they are crowded. If you have to reach office at 9, you must start at 6. But you wouldn’t
want to wake your loved ones at 5 and have them prepare the tiffin for you; that’s where Dabbawala
can help you. Another reason is that even if you start at 8, you won’t be able to carry your own tiffin
because of how crowded the trains are. So, for these two reasons, Dabbawala has been in the business
[of carrying your home food to your office] for the last 120 years. Some 9-10 months back, some
corporate people sent me an email. What are the takeaways from your session? I said, “What takeaways
yaar, I’ll give away whatever you want to take away.” Then I decided, yes, my takeaways are passion,
commitment, consistency, 100% execution, accuracy, dedication, time management and customer
satisfaction. These qualities are there in every dabbawala, in all 5000 of them. These are in-built
qualities that everybody can have. I don’t think the IITs and IIMs can teach these things. I think
entrepreneurs must possess these qualities. The belief is that customer may be King but he is also God.
There is no alternative to hardwork and importance of human values. If these principles are followed,
you will be unbeatable. There’s a group of people called Varkari Sampradaya in Maharashtra; they are
the devotees of Lord Vitthala and there’s a place called Pandharpur, the town of the temple of Vitthala.
When they go to that place, they wear a ‘tulasi mala’. And when a person wears this mala, he will never
drink or smoke because Lord Vitthala doesn’t like it and the same principle is brought into practice here.
Dabbawalas feel that their customer is their Lord Vitthala. These people are poor, they are working in
difficult situations, they are not qualified and they don’t use technology, and yet, they possess all these
qualities and work with passion and commitment. Dabawala was started in 1890 by one Mr. Mahadeo
Havaji Bachche. He was once asked by a Parsi working in the Britisher’s rank, “Will you bring my tiffin
from my home?” He simply answered “Yes, I will, no problem.” From that day onwards, he started to
collect tiffins from homes and delivering them to the respective workplaces. In 1890, there was one
dabbawala and one customer, and now, there are 5000 dabbawalas and 200,000 customers, which
means, one dabbawala carries approximately 40 tiffins. The maximum weight comes to 65-70kg;
carrying that much weight in the crowded local trains is a lot of hard work. Why do they do it then?
Work is worship. And, as far as qualification is concerned, you will see that the average literacy rate is
8th grade schooling; which means the dabbawalas are illiterate and yet they have managed to achieve a
Six Sigma quality rating, which means only one wrong service in a 6 million deliveries. Ownership is a
feeling that an employee has to instill in oneself, and unless you get that feeling of ownership you
cannot work excellently. In 120 years, it has never happened that a dabbawala has failed to deliver. It’s
impossible. They will never tell you that “the trains are late today,” and even if Mumbai trains are late,
the tiffins can’t be late. The dabbawala knows that if he’s not going in time, his customer will eat outside
food, pay money for it and waste time. The dabbawala knows the consequences of going late. So he
always goes on time. The people of Mumbai say with confidence that “our lunch can go wrong but not
the Mumbai dabbawalas.” So nobody can stop you from being punctual. In a lot of institutes, I have
found that there are a number of teachers, a number of professors, who always come late because,
according to me, they decide to go late. Time is very important and it is possible to be punctual if you
have a strong structure. Dabbawalas don’t know the meaning of structure. Let me speak about
(mukadal) group leaders. A group has 10, 20, or 25 dabbawallas, depending on the density of customers
in your area, and their in-charge is the group leader. The responsibility to keep the dabbawalas and the
customers happy is on the group leader. Despite the fact that he doesn’t get even a rupee extra for the
extra10% that he works, he feels proud to be a group leader. For example, the group leader also takes
care of the train passes of the dabbawalas, to check whether they have expired or not; he reminds the
dabbawalas in case their passes are about to expire in the next 2-3 days and also buys the pass for the
dabbawala if he fails to do so himself in order to ensure that timely delivery doesn’t suffer. I will tell you
an instance of how one dabbawala performs duty in one day. He collects 40 tiffins from a particular area
and drops them in the Vile Parle railway station because his customer is from Vile Parle. He can’t deliver
all of them because he would have to go all over Mumbai, so he leaves these 40 there. That’s his first
job. His second job is to collect 35-40 tiffins from his group leader and deliver them to Dadar. His third
job is to deliver 30 tiffins to Chavani Road, and in the fourth job from Chavani Road, he delivers 30 tiffins
to Churchgate. His fifth job is to go from Church Gate to deliver 30 tiffins to NarimanPoint. Finally, in his
sixth job, he delivers 30 tiffins to Express Tower to the customers before lunch time and after lunch, he
will reroute back to his original area and deliver the same tiffins from where he had collected them.
After all this, Forbes has found 1 erroneous delivery out of 6 million deliveries, but they don’t accept
that either. They are unhappy that that one error has occurred. Twelve years ago, some people from
Delhi came to Dabbawala and said they want to do research on Dabbawala; they prepared a project and
went back to Delhi.They called after 3 months and informed Dabbawala about Six Sigma. Dabbawalas
didn’t know what it meant. They told Dabbawala it was a big honour so Dabbawala asked them to send
it across. They were told to go to Delhi and collect it. Sixteen dabbawalas went to Delhi to collect the Six
Sigma certification. People work so hard for Three and Four Sigma but dabbawalas got Six Sigma
because they didn’t care about the certification and cared only about customer satisfaction. It is a big
achievement especially without the use of technology. Even if the dabbawalas use technology in the
form of mobile phones, they can’t because both their hands are used in delivering tiffins. Technology is
useless for them for delivery. And after all this, they charge only 400 rupees per month for delivery.
Dabbawalas have a 0% attrition rate and a 100% retention rate, because they believe that work is
worship. For example, some customers refuse to pay bonus, but the dabbawalas don’t disrupt their
services. So I asked one of them why, he said, “the customer is my God, he has paid me 12 months’ of
salary so it’s ok if he doesn’t pay me one month’s bonus.” Despite the disputes there has never been a
police or a court case. Every 15 days they have a meeting. The disputing dabbawalas resolve their
disputes and if they can’t, the president takes a call and they follow his judgment without questioning.
Dabbawalas feel satisfied. I asked one customer, what he thinks about the dabbawalas. He said,
“Excellent. When I get my salary I am afraid of carrying it in the local train because it’s so crowded and I
can get robbed so instead, after I have lunch, I put the money in the empty dabba and send to my wife.”
Dabbawalas are very honest. If you do services consistently and with discipline, then the customer, at
some point of time, will believe that you are God. In one day, one dabbawala handles 500 tiffins. There
is a 79-year-old man who is a dabbawala, nobody’s forcing him, but he still works because he thinks he
can still provide service to his customers. The dabbawalas use bicycles. Another thing is the coding
system; about 100 years ago, they were using colour codes. Then when Mumbai grew and the number
of customers increased, they started using alphabets; A for Andheri, B for Bandra, etc. And today, they
write a proper code with details of the source, destination and all the dabbawalas involved in that
particular delivery. When this tiffin is coded and then washed, sometimes the coding becomes unclear,
so the dabbawala takes colour out of his pocket and overwrites the code. He doesn’t complain about it,
he just finishes the job. Due to the overcrowded Mumbai local trains, some people enter the luggage
department, and when they do, the tiffins stick to their heads. So they start fighting with the
dabbawalas and the dabbawalas also fight with them but only till the station arrives, because after that
they’re more interested in the delivery. They use carts for longer distances. In running local trains, they
sort the tiffins to save time. Risk is there, but it’s there everywhere. You must work with the situation.
For example, they lost some income and customers because of some instances. In 1969, customers
stopped taking food. In 1975, there was a railway strike; the dabbawalas lost one month’s income. In
1982, 40,000 meal workers went on strike. Till today they’re on strike. A lot of people lost their lives.
Dabbawalas have gone through all this and come out shining. They have been featured on multiple
channels and have been awarded multiple awards. These 50 Indians have influenced Mumbai: Tata,
Birla, Ambani, Thakarey, Sharukh Khan, Amitabh Bachhan and Mumbai Dabbawala. Somebody took a
survey in Mumbai about the likes of people, and Dabbawala was one of them. I am not a Dabbawala. I’m
not involved in any of the operations at all. I have done a Ph.D. on this subject and my topic was ‘A study
of logistics in supply chain management of Dabbawala in Mumbai.’ It took a lot of years to complete my
Ph.D. But, two days into the research, I was taken aback by the passion of these people. I decided to do
the research whether or not I complete my Ph.D. Prince Charles came to Mumbai in 2003. Six months
before his visit, Mr. Jeetendra Jain, in the British Council of India, contacted dabbawala to arrange a visit.
Dabbawala first refused and then, after realizing that Prince Charles is Britain’s royalty in the manner of
a king, he agreed, but, with two conditions. First one was that Prince Charles should come at the
Dabbawala’s convenience — between 11 and 11.40 because that’s when they’re free. Second, Prince
Charle must go to Dabbawala himself. Where to? The footpath. Prince Charles accepted these
conditions. Richard Branson came to Mumbai. He wanted a photo with Dabbawala to put it up in his
office in London to send a message to his employees to work like Dabbawalas. That’s the impact of
Mumbai Dabbawala. (IMPACT ARU LAI KASTO GARIRACHA) There was an inauguration of a book
written by Shobha Bondre. This was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Mr. Vilasrao
Deshmukh. The chief minister said that for every program he goes an hour late but for a dabbawala
program he came 5 minutes early because he was scared that if he came late the Dabbawalas will go
away. I feel very proud to have written a book called Masters of Supply Chain Management on the
dabbawalas. In London, I delivered a speech. There were 240 executives from all over the world.
Because I was Indian, they displayed saris all over the auditorium to show the impact of Indian culture
on them. I was asked one question, suppose my customer was on the moon, how will the Dabbawalas
deliver the tiffin? I said if the moon is in Mumbai, they will, because they’re the Mumbai Dabbawalas.
When Prince Charles got married, only three Indians were invited, out of which, two were Dabbawalas.
When it was the 26th of July, we were flooded with water. Prince Charles called Dabbawala and said
that he and his country are with them. That’s the kind of impact the Dabbawalas have. I wanted the
Dabbawalas to learn computers and English. They didn’t want to learn, so I got a wooden local train and
put PCs inside and now they take classes. Similarly, for English. So friends, make use of your
qualifications with an aim of serving, not yourself, but your family and other people.