An Investigation study on the life and livings, organization and culture of the six sigma winners “Mumbai Dabbawallas”
Global Cuisine Reasearch Assignment
Arjun Singh Arora

Research Proposal

Research Question

An Investigation Study of the Life and Livings, Organisations and Culture of the Six Sigma Winners ‘ Mumbai Dabawalas’

Rationale

The reason why I selected this topic is because I’m very fascinated towards the supply chain management line. I find this research interesting because the “Mumbai Dabawalas” are doing 4,00,000 transactions everyday without the help of any technology or educated manpower and are still able to deliver the tiffins on time and without any errors.

Methodology

To conduct the investigation study I mainly concentrated on secondary research by reading the various studies that have already been conducted by students from other management institudes. To gain more information I also watched a few lectures by Professor Pramod Agarwal (PHD on Supply chain management) and other documentaries such as “….” By BBC.

Declaration

I declare that this report is the result of my own individual efforts and that it conforms to university, departmental and course regulations regarding cheating and plagiarism. No material contained within report has been used in any other submission, by the author, for an academic award.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Chef Shankar Jha for helping me frame the research question for my report and would also like to thank him for his support and assistance in making this report.

Introduction

“Mumbai Dabbawallah” the word generally used to describe the services of Nutan Mumabai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust (MNTBST). The word ‘Dabba’ in Hindi meaning a box usually a tiffin and ‘walla’ in Hindi is the doer, therefore Dabbawalla in general means ‘a person who carries a box’. The Dabbawala are an entire caste of people whose job is to transport home cooked lunches to their locations at peoples’ places of work. There are 5000, largely illiterate, Dabbawala who use a complex system of symbols and home-grown business sense to move 260,000 lunches each day. The system is near flawless (one research paper put it as one screw up in 16 million successful deliveries) and has been going for over a century. Almost all of these men hail from a small village a couple of hours outside of Mumbai and because of the small town nature of things, almost all are somehow related. The unique shape of the city and cheap train network make it affordable for this system to work here and only here. And while it’s amazing to watch these men scurry about doing their job, what I was interested in is how this amazingly Indian concept has held on as long as it has. While fast food is booming as the only option for office workers in virtually every megacity in the world, in Mumbai it is the norm to have a fresh home cooked meal every day.

The system works a bit like this (and while I use gendered terms here the system is becoming less so, again in an interesting way). Man leaves in the morning to go to work at six to accommodate for the two hour commuter train to work. He wants lunch, so his wife would have to get up at four to cook it and send it with him. Instead, in rushes the Dabbawala, making it so that she can send off the lunch at eleven to get to the office at one, giving her an extra five hours of sleep. You subscribe to the service on a monthly basis – man on a bicycle comes by your house to pick up your tiffin (a stainless steel box or canister which everyone uses to eat out of), he hands it off to the next fellow at the train station, who hands it off to someone at the next train, to a sorter, to another bicycle or hand cart, to the office. A couple of hours later the Dabbawala picks up the Tiffin and the whole process happens again in reverse. The average Tiffin goes through the hands of five or six people in each direction. It has a specially designed colour and alpha numeric coding system which is their only mean of information about the owner of the the tiffin. Depending on how far away you live from the office, you can get deliveries for between 400 and 500 rupees a month (three to ten USD).

Now, while this used to be all men receiving and women cooking, it has expanded lots over the past couple of decades. Now about a quarter of the office workers receiving lunches are women. They deliver to schools. If you want to deliver to your husband, children, brothers, sisters, and cousins, you can send Tiffin’s to all of them. If you have no one at home to cook for you the Dabbawala have found homemakers who will be willing to cook extra meals on a subscription basis so that strangers can also have a home cooked meal and the home cooks can get a little bit of extra cash.
I am not the first or last person to marvel at this system. The whole organization organized itself (stemming from a demand during the British rule for home cooked meals that were British for British workers, then moving to Indians wanting their own food too) and incorporated during the 1960s. The three heads of the organization are former runners themselves and now give talks at major business colleges around the world on a system of organization and efficiency which came naturally to them.
Moving away from the marvel that it does work, it’s amazing to think about why people want it to work. In a city which is renowned for its hustle and bustle it’s amazing to think that something as little as a home cooked meal would get this much love and care – but it’s a sign of how people are making attempts to adapt to this way of life while maintaining connections to their roots.

Top 10 reasons to use Dabbawalla

1. Homemade food is best for health, light to digest and nutrituous. Outside junk foods may take your life and makes you sick. Homemade food keeps your doctors bill down and there are fewer absences from office due to poor health. 2. Homemade food is cheaper. When you use Dabbawalas services to deliver your home cooked food to your office you are actually saving your hard earned pennies. The delivery charge of Rs 400 - 500 per month is very nominal and reasonable. It’s simple math’s. 3. Do you not love your mother or wife and like to eat food made by her? 4. Even if there is no one at home to cook food for you, Dabbawala can deliver you good quality home like lunch through many restaurants. There are quality restaurants all over Mumbai where cheap and best quality food is prepared which is delivered at your office or home through Dabbawala Channel. 5. Safety - The Local train of Mumbai are always much crowed and it is very tough to take even small luggage during peak times. Belongings destroyed while traveling during peak time. People leave from their home at about 8 - 9 PM which is peak time and it’s not possible to carry Tiffin during this time and Even the food is not ready by this time. By using our services you are getting hot food safely deliver in your office. 6. Dabbawala give reliable services and their performance and accuracy match six sigma standards. You must be sure that your home cooked food reaches in time. 7. The Dabbawalla’s never go on strike. 8. By using these services you are proving direct employment to 5000+ Dabbawala and many of their dependent families. 9. Dabbawala are an icon in their own sense and famous world over for their efficiency and by taking our services you are being part of India's image building. 10. Dabbawala are from the remote villages of Maharashtra and mostly uneducated. They regularly organize bhajan and kirtans and spread the essence of Marathi culture, good will and oneness of India. Being a part of Dabbawala, you are actually nurturing Marathi culture

The Life and Livings and the Culture of Dabbawallas “People study business books and then practice. We practiced first and have now become case studies” Raghunath Medge (President)
The Dabbawallahs come from the Varkari sect of Maharashtra and are the worshippers of Lord Vithalla, regarded as a form of Krishna. Varkari when translated means a pilgrim and are very religious people with high cultural value. They mainly come from Maharashrtra and the northern part of Karnatka.

Some of their main principles are: * Work is Workship * Customer is God. * No alternate to hard work * Importance of human values.

The average literacy rate of the group is 8th grade schooling. The average coverage of their work area is upto 60 to 70 kms and they delivery their tiffins through bicycles, hand carts and by foot. The only motorized means of travel they use is the local trains of Mumbai. Each dabbawalla works for 8 to 9 hours out of which 3 hours of work is wartime for them. On an average a dabbawalla carries 40 tiffins which approximately way 65-70kg.
Discplines:
* No Alcohol Drinking / Smoking during business hours. * Wearing White Cap during business hours. * Carry Identity Cards. * No Leave without Prior Notice.
Code of conduct: * Rs 500- Drinking on duty * Rs 100- Smoking on duty * Rs 25- Not wearing white cap * Rs 25- Not carrying ID card * Rs 1000- Leave without intimation, sacked if repeated in 2-3 instances A day in the life of a Dabbawalla * The Dabbawalla leave there homes in the morning between 7.50 am to 8.30 am depending upon from which areas they have to pick up tiffin boxes. * The Dabbawalas reaches the customers homes according to the timing fixed between two of them. * The day in home then hands over the prepared & packed tiffin box to the Dabbawala. * Collecting 30-35 tiffin boxes (from area specified to him) is the responsibility of each Dabbawala, but there were we can see that number of Dabbas picked up is also dependent upon the age of the Dabbawalas. Where young person picks even 40 Tiffin’s each, an elder person might pick 30! * Also collecting tiffin is not an easy task. Because, Dabbawalas have to pick up tiffin boxes from various distant location in his area. These locations may be far from each other located on higher floors of the building where sometimes elevator may not be available. * These tiffin boxes are then taken to the nearest local station by vehicle, Usually a bicycle or in long wooden crates carried on the head! E.g. If a Dabbawala a collecting Tiffin boxes from area of Ghatkopar then he will carry them to Ghatkopar or Vikhroli railway station whichever is nearer from his area of collecting Tiffins

The Organisation

“It’s a model of managerial & organizational simplicity” C. K. Pralhad
The History states back to 1890 when the services of the dabbawalla were first started during the British Raj. Mr Dhondiba Meghe, the founder of the trust who was only educated till the 4th standard framed the rules and regulations for his organization and strongly believed in the principle “Time is Money”. The trust was registered in 1956 as a charitable trust and today the employee strength is more than 5000 dabbawallas.

The Organizational Structure

The structure is a very simple and a flat one with jus 13 members in the top management heading a team of 5000 employees. The Mukadams are the supervisors or the group leaders. Mukadam is a Marathi word meaning leader and the only required qualification for promotion is Age. The eldest member of the group is promoted as a Mukadam.

Duties and Responsibilities
PRESEDENT

* Taking monthly meeting * Checking accounts of the association * Solving the problems among the members
GENERAL SECRETARY

* Drafting the various types of letters * Collecting the trust fees
MUKADAM

* Supervising the functioning of the members in his group.
MEMBERS

* To deliver Tiffin Boxes to the customers & carry Tiffin Boxes back to their home respectively.
Human Resource Policies Of The Association

The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust is registered institution. Though it is so, it does not function as a commercial institution e.g. courier company.
The organization is formed by the members. To avoid any disputes & give each member pride, the employee-employer relationship is avoided. Each member is a shareholder in the association. He gets his monthly salary from each of his customers directly.
All the members in a group gather on a particular date of each month mostly at a nearest local office of the organization or the trust (NUTAN MUMBAI TIFFIN BOX SUPPLIERS' CHARITABLE TRUST). All the members collect their salary together, cut down for overheads & travel expenses. Also each member contributes amount of rupees 10;/- towards for the charity purposes.
E.g. there is the group of 15 Dabbawalas
They carry 30 dabbas each
They get Rs. 150/- customer
So calculation goes like this:
15×150×30 = 675000/-
So. Gross earning of this group is Rs. 67500/-

Now from this amount, a collective amount of Rs. 4000/- approximately is deducted comprising expenses for railways pass, expenses for parking the carts & cycles & overheads the remaining amount is divided equally into all members of the group.
So, suppose now after deductions, group has left with 63500/-; it will be divided equally among all the members, thus each member getting Rs. 4230/- each. This salary may not be sufficient compared to the cost of living in Mumbai also may of have their families back in villages to send money to. To cope up, with this problem, few of the Dabbawala have started doing some side business for extra income. Some of them after returning home in evening drive auto-rickshaws or early in morning before going on work distribute newspaper or milk.
The association once a month calls a meeting of all the members. In this meeting. It tries to solve the internal problems of the members. Such problem & solutions solved till now have laid a kind of unwritten rules & regulations for the members of the organization to follow in certain cases.
1. In the case of loss of Tiffin Box of the Dabbawala, if he is found guilty, then the customer is refunded the appropriate amount for the loss.
2. Each member is supposed to operate in his allocated area only & not interfere with any of his fellow colleagues, work area. In fact normally no Dabbawala does this too!
3. In case if the customer is not pleased with dabbawala provided to him for service, both of them cannot co-ordinate well with each other then the organization can shift that dabbawala to some other area & replace other dabbawala in his area.

HR PRACTICES OF THE ASSOCIATION
Flat Organisation:

The President, Vice president, General Secretary, Treasurer & 9 Directors formed 13 members of board under which Mukadam & other Dabbawalas work. So due to such Flat kind of organization structure decisions are taken on the spot. Even the president & other higher categories members also work.
No Hire and Fire Rule:

Everyone is shareholder of the association. Whatever profits they can equally distributed within itself. It is democratic type of organization HR Practices.
Community Based Recruitment:

Those who have capacity to job they can apply for the Dabbawala post. There is no any kind of basis happens related to recruitment process.
Sharing Common Believes, Values and Ethics:

All the Dabbawalas are from poor background, the aim of the organization is mutual benefit to all members so they follow certain values, belief & ethics to run business effectively.
Following on strict dress code:

All Dabbawalas must wear white cap which is called as Gandhian cap on duty. Also wear white sadara & pyjama (shirts & pants). All Dabbawals must carry their Identity card on duty. All these rules are bninding on all cadres of the Dabbawala.
Loyalty and Trust:

All Dabbawalas are loyal & hard working in nature. They follow their norms & promise which they made their customers. Training provided to new employees:

After recruitment they provide complete process training to new joiner under the observation of Mukadam or any senior member. When they feel that new employees are capable to work, that time training will completed.
Owner and Employee is the designation for all:

Everyone is the shareholder of the Association. All disciplinary rules & other ethics follow by all members. So there is no any employee & employer relationship between each other. All are owners of the business.
Leaves:

NMTBST has segregated annual leave on two types
Weekly Leave:
All Dabbawala gets weekly leave on every Sunday. Festival Leave:
All Dabbawallas are devotees of lord Shiv shankaras & vitthalas so NMTBASA only sanctioned leaves for those festivals which are celebrated for their God.

* Mahashivaratri (Festival of Shiv Shankaras) * Aashadhi Ekadashi (Festival of Lord vitthalas) * Kartiki Ecakashi (Festival of Lord Vitthalas) * Chaitra Pournima (New Year of Marathi People) * Diwali (2 days) (Festival of Lights)

Quaterly Meetings to discuss issues:

Every quarter all Dabbawalas meet & discuss issues related to service, salary & future goal. They discuss balance sheet & distribute profits among them. If any critical issue arises that time they cal immediate meeting. Also conduct daily meeting to handle day to day problem. All Dabbwalas can participate in meeting & can contribute his suggestion.

MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES OF THE DABBAWALA
Team Work:

Working with team is the strength of the Dabbawals. Also Team work is the key aspect of their inner self satisfaction (proved by research). One Tiffin box goes from many hands of the Dabbawals & finally reaches at exact destination which shows success of their Team Work.
Time Management:

They deliver Tiffin boxes before 12 pm at customer's office. There duty starts from morning 8 am. Same time there is always lots of rush at railway station, & traffic on the road, in such kind of critical situation they able to deliver lunch boxes on time. They got Six Sigma because of their Time management & no. defects in deliveries.
Innovation:

Dabbawala promote innovation. They started coding system to Tiffin box for easy identification, which are one of the examples of their innovation strategy. They believe on continuous improvement by way of innovation.
Customer Relationship Management:

100% customer satisfaction is the success of their system. They achieved this level because of maintaining good relationship with customers. They believe on “Service to Customer Is Service to God”.
Six Sigma:

They have got the prestigious achievement of SIX SIGMA RATING because of their percentage of correctness which is just perfect up to 99.999995 i.e. six decimals or more than that. Not many of the topmost companies are even near to it. They achieved six sigma in following aspects. * Simplified coding system * High conformity to the system * Buffer in the lead time * Confirmed by the limits of the human capabilities
Logistics and Supply Chain Management:

By using their own logistic methods they deliver lacks of tiffin boxes through many dabawalas hand: but the final goal is to reach tiffin box before 12 pm. At customer’s office everyday they achieve their goal.

DABBAWALAS' UNIQUE SUPPLY CHAIN MODEL
Millions in Mumbai commute everyday to earn a living. Banks, colleges, hospitals, government offices, private offices, factories and ports are all spread across different parts of the city. In a country where hot and freshly cooked home food is the most preferred for consumption, carrying of lunch boxes is a big burden for the working populace. However, this problem is unheard of in this metro city thanks to the presence of the 100 year old organization of “Dabbawalas”.
The Dabbawala community has about 5000 people working with them. These Dabbawalas deliver lunch boxes for about 2 lakh people at their work places on time. The work doesn’t end here. They also carry the empty lunch boxes back to the homes of the customers. The unbelievable part is they make only one mistake in sixteen million transactions and have been consistently good at it for all the time of their operations. This credibility earned them a six sigma designation by the Forbes magazine and ISO 9001 accreditation. The three main reasons for their success are as follows.
Supply Chain Management

Surprisingly there is no use of Information systems or technology for their Supply chain side. A rigorous level of practice over the years has led to the unwritten steps to follow for accurate supply chain management and time precision. There are about 40000 transactions (delivery and return) of lunch boxes taking place daily. The figure below shows their Supply chain model.
Dabbawalas use cycles or go by foot to every household. The waiting time to collect a lunch box is maximum 2 minutes. Every Dabbawala has to assemble at his/her reported collection point at sharp 9. 30 am From these collection points they assemble at the nearest railway station which is the Aggregation point. The next mode of transport is the trains where the carriers containing lunch boxes are transported to the destination railway stations. From every Destination station the dabbas are carried over carts, cycles and carriers to the destination zones which are given a specific number
From these zones, the lunch boxes are carried to the offices or workplaces which reach by lunchtime
From here the reverse process of delivering the empty lunch boxes back to homes starts
(All through the above process, there is no slack at any point of time)
Traffic Jams, pedestrians, delays in train and signals do not stop the functioning. The trademark white cap wore by these Dabbawalas are known to everyone including the police who don’t interfere in their processes

CODING SYSTEM

Coding System is meticulously followed in order to avoid any mistakes involving interchange of lunch boxes, that is, wrong Tiffin box reaching the customer.
As given in the above Diagram, the Coding system can be explained as follows:

Conclusion
Managing more than 5000 Dabawalas daily is really increased! So what kind of Human resource policy they have adopted & how do they implemented it, was the objective behind these report. Which are satisfactory completed, & I got some key formulas, principles of their effective Human resource management system from this project work.
The lacks of office goers, 5000 Dabbawalas & risky job schedules, all these kind of problems they are able to handle only due to their efficient Human resource management system. Mr. Dhondiba Medge formed Human Resource Policy for Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers' Association. He set core values for the Association, these improved their system.
The key feature of their Human Resource Management is Flat organizational structure. These are able to maintain no communication barriers from top level to lower level. All Dabbawalas are employer of the association, there has no any employee-employer relation. This thing is them motivational factor behind their job satisfaction. Effective delegation of authority helps them to do work effectively. From top level to lower level Dabbawalas know their work & their target which helps to effective job specification.
They have implemented Human Resource Policy in their organization, these contains strict disciplinary rules of employment, dress code & effective training & development facility to new joiners.
They follow management principles in their organization such as Team work, Time management, Innovation, Customer relationship management & six sigma. Because of these they called as "Management Guru".
Human resource policy, Manpower planning. Training & Development, Disciplinary Code of conduct & their Corporate Social Responsibility activity are the key result areas of their Human Resource Management system.
Their daily earning is not sufficient to fulfill their basic needs but whatever they earn out of from it some amount they spend in FSR activities. 'We are the part of society which provides many resources to us, so it is our prime duty to give back to society'-these CSR principle they follow.
The organization has gained a lot of appreciation from foreign countries but it still in some ways or other not fully appreciated by its own countrymen. Organization can do a lot to perform better but it needs support & word appreciation firm its own countrymen. It so, it will even leave back the top world running entrepreneurs & give India a place of pride on the world map.
The Dabbawalas organization is a standout example of efficient Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Corporate and students should make note of their functioning in order to understand their unique structure and process. Today the Dabbawalas have welcomed the use of internet technology only for increasing their customer base and nothing more. Many fast food chains and hotels in the city will always be competing with the Dabbawalas but their hope of failure of Dabbawalas system may never materialize.