Six Sigma Achievement in India By DabbaWala

The Dabbawala – Six Sigma Sharing

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“The system the dabbawalas have developed over the years revolves around strong teamwork and strict time-management… Tata, Coca-Cola and Daimler have all invited dabbawalas to explain their model to managers.” -The Economist, Management Trends, 2008

The dabbawala are an incredible organization of over 5000 people in Mumbai. The word “Dabba” loosely means “lunch box”; “walla” means carrier or deliver man. But them together and you get “Lunch box carrier”. In this case it refers to a stackable tin box used for hot meals called the tiffin.
The dabbawala was set up in 1890 to carry lunches from home to office for British administrators who would not carry their own lunches in public. Today it serves a similar function form the commuters of Mumbai – home to 17 million people.
Every day, for a very modest fee, the dabbawalas collect freshly cooked meals from their customers’ homes all over Mumbai. Travelling by train, bus and bicycle, they then sort and deliver each of them to offices and workplaces throughout the city by lunchtime – and even return the used tiffins back to the customer’s home for reuse.
This is not in any way a small operation. The dabbawala deliver an astonishing 200,000 meals across the city, every day…with incredible efficiency, and almost perfect accuracy in order fulfilment.
Western companies like Amazon and FedEx strive to achieve that kind of accuracy through advanced technology. Not so in the case of the dabbawala.
Despite its incredible efficiency, theirs is a very low-tech system… built around train schedules, bicycles, and delivery men. The only modern technology involved in the process are a website, and an ordering system enabling people to text in their last-minute orders.
To satisfy their customers, they use a complex system of collection teams, sorting points and delivery zones, and a completely manual system for routing the right meal to the right destination. This labelling system must rely purely on numbers and colors, painted on the tiffin – because most of the dabbawalas are illiterate and cannot read.
Despite challenges like this, the organization has been recognized and celebrated for their amazing order accuracy…estimated at roughly 1 error in every 16 million transactions. (Yes, you read that right.). They have been granted ISO9000 status and they have been recognized by Forbes as being a Six Sigma organization.
And there are clearly lessons here that can be applied in any organization.
Which is why Harvard Business School made the dabbawala the subject of a case study in 2010, why business leaders from around the world have visited them, and why their leader was invited to address a TEDx conference in 2011.
Recently they came up in the news again, this time on the web… as the key to a new idea for helping to feed Mumbai’s 200,000+ slum children.
A private charity called the Happy Life Welfare Society realized that the dabbawala could represent an opportunity to get food to those in need.
You see, a certain amount of the food they deliver is never eaten, or barely touched. This perfectly good food – as much as 16 tons per day – was going into the garbage, while the street children of Mumbai were literally starving to death.

They contacted the south Mumbai arm of the dabbawala organization, who immediately expressed their willingness to help.
The solution they developed together is simple, inexpensive, and does not risk delaying the dabbawala’s schedule or their record of on-time delivery. And it gives the people of Mumbai a personal way to fight the poverty in their city, without actually demanding very much of them.

“This Share My Dabba system is the perfect example of a clever charity.  No one is losing out, less food is being wasted, and kids are getting the nourishment they need because of an easy to use program.” – Happy Life Welfare Society, program notes

Here’s how it works:
Anyone who doesn’t want all of the food in their lunch can simply place a sticker saying “Share” on the tiffin of uneaten food.
The dabbawala pick up the tiffins after lunch as usual, and take them back to a central redistribution location. Here volunteers meet them, quickly separate the tiffins with “Share” stickers, remove the food in them to give to the children, and then quickly repack the tiffins so the dabbawala can get them back to customers’ homes on schedule. The whole process takes less than 15 minutes.
The food these children receive may be cold, but is otherwise perfectly good, and would otherwise be going to waste.
It’s a brilliant, simple, creative way of addressing a gigantic problem. Everyone has a chance to personally contribute, and the cost – in rupees, or in disruption – is minimal.

“You can’t afford to disturb their schedule, so you need several hands and work fast to distribute the shared food. Then you have to go and talk to people – shopkeepers, workers, office goers etc – to make them want to share the dabba, involve them in the process.” – Kanupriya Singh, Happy Life Welfare Society

Obviously, getting the word out is critical. And here the program has been very successful at using today’s most powerful tools: the Internet and social networks.

Take a look…maybe it will spark some new ideas for approaching challenges in your own city. At the very least, you’ll be inspired by the beautiful simplicity and humanity of what they are doing.

Source : http://www.themarkofaleader.com/library/stories/the-dabbawala-six-sigma-sharing/