[nukkad] Mumbai's dabbawalas

[Farook <>]

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The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, 
and to fly from all that pursue him. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
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You must have heard about this...

Six Sigma - Mumbai Dabbawala's

They make one error on every 16 million transactions. Forbes magazine has
selected them as a colossal example of six sigma's success.

Logistics at its best

The Mumbai tiffinwallas are international figures now thanks to Forbes
Global. The Forbes story details the efficiency which with they deliver the
tiffins of their customers. Around 5000 tiffinwallas deliver 175,000 lunches
everyday and take the empty tiffin back. They make one mistake in 2 months.
This means there is one error on every 16 million transactions. This is thus
a six sigma performance (a term used in quality assurance if the percentage
of correctness is 99.999999) - the performance which has made companies like
Motorola and GE world famous for their quality. Here is the complete story
...

Mumbai's "tiffinwallahs" have achieved a level of service to which Western
businesses can only aspire. "Efficient organization" is not the first
thought that comes to mind in India, but when the profit motive is given
free rein, anything is possible. To appreciate Indian efficiency at its
best, watch the tiffinwallahs at work. These are the men who deliver
175,000 lunches (or "tiffin") each day to offices and schools throughout
Mumbai, the business capital of India.

Lunch is in a tin container consisting of a number of bowls, each containing
a separate dish, held together in a frame. The meals are prepared in the
homes of the people who commute into Mumbai each morning and delivered in
their own tiffin carriers. After lunch, the process is reversed. And what a
process - in it's complexity, the 5,000 tiffinwallahs make a mistake only
about once every two months, according to Ragunath Medge, 42, president of
the Mumbai Tiffinmen's Association. That's one error in every 8 million
deliveries, or 16 million if you include the return trip. "If we made 10
mistakes a month, no one would use our service," says the craggily handsome
Medge.

How do they do it? The meals are picked up from commuters' homes in suburbs
around central Mumbai long after the commuters have left for work, delivered
to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before the commuters
return. Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols
which identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and
destination stations and the address to which it is to be delivered. After
the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest railway
station, where they are sorted according to the destination station.

Between 10:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. they are loaded in crates onto the baggage
cars of trains. At the destination station they are unloaded by other
tiffinwallas and re-sorted, this time according to street address and floor.
The 100-kilogram crates of carriers, carried on tiffinwallahs' heads,
hand-wagons and cycles are delivered at 12:30 p.m., picked up at
1:30 p.m., and returned where they came from.

The charge for this extraordinary service is just 150 rupees ($3.33) per
month, enough for the tiffinwallahs, who are mostly self-employed, to make a
good living. After paying Rs. 60 per crate and Rs.120 per man per month to
the Western Railway for transport, the average tiffinwallas clears about
Rs.3, 250. Of that sum, Rs. 10 goes to the Tiffinmen's Association. After
minimal expenses, the rest of the Rs. 50,000 a month that the Association
collects go to a charitable trust that feeds the poor. Superb service and
charity too. Can anyone ask for more?

What is wonderful about this system is that it extends the design and uses
the tiffinwallas, the end user and their cognitive and memory structure as
well. Since one tiffinwalla is not going to pick more than 10-20 tiffins, he
can easily sort recognize at the originating station and deliver it to the
owner. Also within a building, the tiffinwala knows which floor to deliver.
Within a floor a owner can recognize his tiffin amongst others.

These tiffins carry only
* A symbol (not name) of the originating station
* A symbol for the destination station
* A symbol for the building where the addressee is. And what is more amazing
is that this is run by people, most of whom are illiterate.


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