The Dabbawala System : On Time Delivery Every Time

Done by

Riya Mathew

19021141088

The dabbawalas started their operation almost 120 year back when a banker in Mumbai had
hired a man to deliver his packed lunch form home to his office and return the empty lunch
boxes back to his home. This opportunity was seized by one of original delivery man,
Mahadev haji bache. A semiliterate workforce was assigned to pick up the lunch boxes from
home and deliver it to the destined locations and return the empty boxes back to its origin
on the same day. Their operating quality was as good as the six sigma processes and they
accomplished this in the absence of technology. Roughly 260,000 transaction were done on
a daily basis within 6 hours of 6 days of every week.

They relied on word of mouth for acquiring new customers. They stood out from the rest
because of their white Gandhi caps, distinctive bicycles and handcarts which advertised for
their service. Mumbai being city with wide variety of castes and some communities, people
have different preferences when it comes to food. Some don’t prefer eating from outside or
office canteens, some due to religious beliefs refrain eating certain food items. All these
people preferred home cooked meal but the challenge was carrying it to their workplaces.
Since the trains are too crowded, they don’t prefer carrying the lunch boxes with them. This
opportunity was utilized by dabbawalas. They offered punctual, reliable, affordable and
trustworthy service which was highly appreciated by the customers.

About 200 groups worked synchronously throughout the day, where each were assigned
their designated areas and customers and the group members shared the profits equally.
Members were of the age group 18 to 65. Groups also elected representatives for managing
the committee that would take care of operational and social issues, conflicts that affected
the dabbawalas. There were 635 muqaddams who carried dabbas as well as helped to
solve the operational issues. In addition to this, there were supervisors who were a part of
the two committees, monitored the functioning of the dabbawala system. The two
committees are: the operational committee and the charitable trust.
New members were hired form the nearby villages of Pune. they were either relatives or
members of the dabbawalas sharing the same beliefs, culture, language etc. They were
hired on probation for six months after which they could buy into the business. For the first
6 months, the fixed salary was 3000 Rs, after which they have to invest 10 times the
expected monthly income in a groups business to become a member and partner of that
group. They preferred uneducated and underqualified members over educated and
overqualified as they feel the latter would be demotivated and would waste time on asking
too many questions.

The main retention tool they had maintained was the emotional unity which results in
excellent teamwork. Highly satisfied dabbawalas are likely to stay within their group
maintaining long term relationship with the customers. This helps to identify and solve the
issues easily. They followed a strict code conduct where the members violating the rules
would be punished or fines were imposed.

In the case of finances, individual dabbawalas were given the responsibility to negotiate
with the customers regarding the pricing withing the guidelines set by the management
which took into consideration the average weight of the dabbas, the distance between the
home and the office, closest railway station etc.Since the dabbawalas made use of existing
infrastructure, low maintenance and non-fuel based transportation, their operating cost are
low. Once a year, the customers paid them a bonus of one months charges, if they refused
to do so, they discontinued their service.

Coding system

Dabbawalas invented a very logical and easy to understand coding and distribution system.
The prime activities involved in this process are collection, sorting, transportation and
distribution of tiffins. Distribution system has two main zones i.e. Collection point Railway
Station and Destination Railway Station, where all the tiffins are collected and sorted
according to their codes which primarily denote its final destination and pick up point.

The code on the lid had 3 main symbols. First, the large and bold symbol at the centre
indicated which neighbourhood it had to be delivered. Second, on the edge of the lid, there
were group of codes: a numerical code for the dabbawala who would make the delivery
followed by 2-3 letters indicating the building name and floor number. Third, there were a
group of symbols, motifs or shapes indicating the station of origin.

Dabbawalas efforts at providing steady, speedy, accurate delivery brought laurels to them
as they had gained trust and faith of the customers. In-order to maintain this excellence in
service, they were aware of the changing contextual factors influenced and affected their
work. They knew a single delayed lunch box could create a cascading effect affecting
thousands of dabba deliveries. They had built in buffers by having 2 or 3 extra workers per
group and all the members were trained for cross fucntonally in all the activities.

Their efforts during Mumbai floods is a proof of their trustworthy service. During the second
day of the floods before the city came back to life, they waded through 2 feet deep water
due to their deep commitment and work ethic not leaving the dabbas stranded anywhere.
Amidst the loss of property and life, dabbawalas symbolized resilience and spirit of Mumbai.

Comparison of Dabbawalas and FedEx

The Dabbawala system is a very efficient supply chain system of supplying home-cooked
lunch boxes to the offices in Mumbai, India. The Dabbawala system is very old and
successful supply chain system as they are operating from more than 125 years in the one of
the most crowded city of the world. Although they are operating with very less resources
and with minimal use of technology by using public transport of the city but with very high
degree of accuracy as they make less than one mistake in every 6 million deliveries. The
Dabbawalas have got ISO 9000 status for their delivery system and they are recognized as a
Six Sigma organization by Forbes. The world-class companies like FedEx, global delivery giant
study the Dabbawala system because they want to learn that how the Dabbawalas
performing so accurately for such a long period of time by using minimum resources. The
most important reason of the success of Dabbawalas is their human resource, their job
clarity and understanding of the whole supply chain process as they know that they have to
be on-time otherwise their services are of no use for their customers. They rely more on
tradition system which they are using for years like their hand written codes on Dabbas and
public transports like train and buses of the city. The world-class companies want to learn
from Dabbawalas that how to make and operate a simple, accurate, customer-oriented
supply chain process at very low cost.

FedEx:

Back in 1971, it was very difficult to deliver packages within a day or two, this is when FedEx
saw this as an opportunity to introduce a new business. FedEx is known for its speedy
delivery and reliability. Started with 14 planes and a team of 389 staff, now FedEx has more
than 425,000 employees and 411 aircrafts. FedEx is looking to improve continuously in order
to remain relevant in the current market space.
Modifications to be made:

The Dabbawala community has to embrace technology to keep intact the customer base
and to add more customers. To tackle changing food habits amongst the customers, they
need to explore the untapped areas of variety food options. They can use their credibility to
tie up with various food chains which focus on healthy eating with variety of dishes.To
market their entry into the new area, they can use their already existing reach to a large
number of corporate offices in Mumbai. They can distribute pamphlets/stickers in the
corporate offices to reach the target customers. Nevertheless, with an ability to embrace
change and to adapt to changing circumstances accompanied by strong work ethics, this
127-year-old system can never perish.