DABBAWALA AND THE LUNCH BOX

In 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service with about a hundred men.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. The current president of the association is Raghunath Medge.This an information about a service known as Dabbawala,most commonly in Mumbai, who is part of a delivery system that collects hot food in lunch boxes from the residences of workers in the late morning, delivers the lunches to the workplace utilizing various modes of transport, predominantly bicycles and the rail trains, and returns the empty boxes back to the customer's residence that afternoon. They are also made use of by prominent meal suppliers in Mumbai where they ferry ready, cooked meals from central kitchens to the customers and back.

SUPPLY CHAIN

The supply chain process start with collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas either from a worker's home or from the dabba makers. As many of the carriers are illiterate, the dabbas have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or group of symbols.

The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place, where he and other collecting dabbawalas sort and sometimes bundlethe 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 railway station to unload the boxes and the destination building delivery address.At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala, who delivers them. The empty boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective houses.

CODING SYSTEM

Next is about Coding their package. Lunch boxes are usually marked in several ways: (1) abbreviations for collection points, (2) colour code for starting station, (3) number for destination station and (4) markings for handling dabbawala at destination, building and floor.[4]A typical dabbawala lunch.It was estimated in 2007 that the dabbawala industry was still growing by 5-10% per annum.The dabbawalas have started to embrace technology, and now allow for delivery requests through SMS.A colour-coding system identifies the destination and recipient. Each dabbawala is 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 Gandhi cap (topi). Each month there is a division of the earnings of each unit.

SIX-SIGMA

Forbes never certified the dabbawalas as being a six-sigma organization. In fact, I never used the term at all. As you know, six-sigma is a process, not a statistic. But it is commonly associated with a statistic of 3.4 errors per million operations, and that is what caused the confusion.The efficiency and complexity of the process by which some 175,000 tiffin boxes were sorted, transported, delivered and returned each day by people who were mostly illiterate and unsophisticated.Question to the head of the organization how often they made a mistake. He said almost never, maybe once every two months. Any more than that would be unforgivable to customers.One mistake in 8 million deliveries, since the tiffin carriers are returned home each day.