The magic of the 'Dabbawallah'

KOLKATA: From Kharagpur to Nebraska, they listened to him. Students, professors, delegates et al --- everyone of them. All experts in varying degrees on the subject of management in various disciplines. The speaker: a nondescript Manish Tripathi, who happens to be the honorary director and CIO of the Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association (MTBSA), in short, a head honcho of the famed Mumbai dabbawallas.

As he unravelled the mysteries of the 116-year-old supply chain management logistics of dabbawallas, students and teachers of the engineering and management sections of IIT Kharagpur listened in rapt attention.

So did a 39-member visiting delegation from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, US, who were down at the Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT, Kgp. After all, these largely unassuming dabbawallas in `Gandhi-topi' have perfected a system that has earned them a Six Sigma rating from Forbes, signifying that their rate of error is just one in every 16 million transactions! Small wonder, even fancy MBA-toting professionals clamour to have these dabbawallas teach them a thing or two!

Every day, 5,004 dabbawallas, including four women, carry some 2 lakh dabbas from homes and messes to offices, covering a total area of 60-70 km. They use a unique coding system for identification of dabbas and use the extensive network of Mumbai's local trains as their major mode of transport. That's a cool 4 lakh transactions a day, with an approximate turnover of Rs 30 crore a year.

Here are the major features of their supply chain -- 0% fuel, 0% investment, 0% disputes, 99.999% performance and 100% customer satisfaction. "In the last 116 years, we have never had a strike, as each person is a shareholder in the operation. To us, strike means suicide," said Mr Tripathi.

For the dabbawallas, who have got both the Six-Sigma and ISO certification, these certificates mean nothing. In fact, their Six Sigma certificate is apparently gathering dust in the cupboard. "All we care about is customer satisfaction," says Tripathi. In fact, when Prince Charles evinced an interest in meeting them, he was told to come to Churchgate, so that their delivery schedules were not affected. And Virgin boss Richard Branson actually travelled with them to deliver dabbas to his employees!

Though the dabbawallas still believe in keeping everything simple, they have now started booking orders on SMS and launched a website to keep up with the changing times.

And their management mantras? Mr Tripathi outlined a several-point agenda. Keep operational costs as low as possible, keep capital investment to a bare minimum, just serve your customer, never deviate from your core competency, flat organisation, keep extras for fault tolerance and know the implication of failure were just some of the points mentioned.

While everyone came away mighty impressed at the end of the session, especially so were the students from the visiting delegation from the University of Nebraska, who had never seen or heard of such an organisation before. "It's fascinating to see a business where everybody does the same work. It's very unique," said Andrew Elliot.