rantlust

Posted by john on March 17th 2006 in Business, Food & Wine, India, Raves, Society
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In lieu of packing a cold lunch or going out, most of us would prefer a good old homecooked lunch when taking our midday break during each workday. A good homecooked meal that is still warm from the kitchen is an even bigger bonus. Office-goers in Bombay (now Mumbai), India have been blessed by a 120-year old system that delivers just this. Run by groups of dabbawalas (dabba being the metal lunch container and wala referring to a person associated with a trade), these people run an incredibly efficient logistics model that has been the subject of a quite a few industrial and academic case studies. You could say it is the near perfect supply chain.

It works like this: A man leaves early in the morning for the office and his wife cooks his lunch for him a little later on and packs it into a tiffin box (i.e. dabba). At a specific time every morning, a dabbawala arrives to pick up the tiffin box and from there, it goes on an amazing journey where it is changes hands, passed on from one dabbawala to another, all working together to ensure that the tiffin box arrives at the man’s office on time for lunch. You could liken it to a relay race where the tiffin box is the baton. The dabbawalas rely on their legs, bicycles and Bombay’s extensive commuter rail system to transport the lunches. After lunch hour, the process is reversed and the empty tiffin box is returned back to the man’s residence. All of this for a very affordable monthly fee.

Part of what makes this amazing is that most dabbawalas are semi-literate. Yet they have developed a simple but fail-proof code marking for each tiffin box that indicates exactly who owns the lunch, where it is picked up, where it is dropped off as well as the route to be taken each day. This code markings consist of simple letters, symbols and colors. There are no modern conveniences such as computers, internet, cell phones used in the delivery model.

A Forbes study in the late 1990s designated the dabbawala system with an amazing six sigma rating, which indicates an extremely efficient process where the errors occurring were so minimal that the process could be said to be practically error-free.

Ratings aside, there are other real problems that the dabbawalas have to deal with on a daily basis. They have to carry their heavy dabba loads while jostling with other commuters on the trains. They have to negotiate the treacherous Bombay vehicular traffic when on bicycles as well as the crowded pedestrian sidewalks. Accidents do happen and when they do, news travels like lightning through the grapevine. If a dabbawala is incapacitated, another one will often take over the tiffin box delivery, thereby ensuring the lunches arrive at their destinations (even if a little late). There is also that little event of the seasonal monsoon floodings that can wreak havoc on the Bombay transportation systems.

A few years ago, Prince Charles, on a visit to Bombay, was so impressed with the dabbawalas he had met and their business system, that he invited representation from them for his wedding later on to Camilla Parker-Bowles.

So to the hardworking, highly efficient dabbawalas of Bombay, a salute to your dedication, ingenuity and tradition. Keep those tiffin boxes moving and may your business continue to thrive.

Read more about them here.