MUMBAI “DABBAWALA”: and MANAGERIAL FUNCTIONS
AN ENTREPRENURIL SUCCESS STORY
HUNGRY? Would you like a fresh, hot meal from home? Most manager don’t have that choice it’s
either a sandwich,
A pizza or a trip to restaurant. Unless you live in Mumbai, that is,
where a small army of “dabbawala” picks up 175,000 lunches
From home and delivers them to harried students, managers and workers
every working day. At your desk. 12.30 pm on the dot.
Served hot, of course.
And now you can even order over the
internet.
THE MUMBAI TIFFEN BOX SUPPLIERS
ASSOCIAATION IS A STREAMLINE 120-YEAR-OLD ORGANIZATION with 4500 semiliterate
members providing a quality
Door-to-door service to a large and loyal
customer base.
Who
could speak better than them on managerial skills? These management gurus are
not business tycoons or managers of a Multinational company: but they are not
lesser than them. An organization with SIX SIGMA and ISO 9001:2000
certification, fans like prince Charles and Richard Branson
(Of virgin Airways), Ripley’s believe it
or not and Guinness book of world Records registration.
Low error rate
Dabba
system (lunch box distribution) in Mumbai is a perfect example of low error rate, customer
satisfaction, team work, time management, discipline.
The unique and highly efficient 117-year old logistic system has
an error rate of one in 16 million transactions.
Team work
The entire system depends on
team work and meticulous timing. Tiffin boxes are collected from homes between
7 am and 9 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 the single Tiffin box could change hands
Three
to four times in the course of its daily journey.
Discipline
& Time management
They are extremely
particular about the time and realize the value of every second in the value
chain. So much so the prince Charles wanted to meet them. They give him a
precious time slot so that the thousands others would not have to skip their
lunch.
Customer satisfaction
Around 5000 Dabbawalas in Mumbai serves 2 lakh customer everyday by
delivering customers homemade lunch at their work places before their lunch
time
And
giving the lunch boxes back to their residence in the evening.
|