MBA - Crash course

Have you ever heard of a company with "No hire or fire" rule? 
Have you ever come across a company where "the employee has never retired or left the company?"
Have you seen a team of people working together, yet "Not a single error" ? A company which has "never faced a STRIKE" ? or there has never been a single "Police record!!!! 
These illiterate workers prove "YOU DONT NEED AN MBA TO RUN AN ORGANISATION"


MUMBAI DABBAWALLA : 
(Data collected from various researched articles and studies )

UNBELIEVABLE HISTORY :

Since 1890, still working without any faults

Average Literacy rate of the workers : 8th standard schooling. 

HR PRACTICES: 

• Flat Organisation
• No hire or fire rule
• Community based recruitment 
• Sharing common ethics, values and beliefs
• Following strict dress code
• Loyalty and trust in their monopoly
• Training provided to new comers.
• Owner + Employee is the designation of each
• Quarterly meetings to discuss issues

Their Principles ......
 "Shakti aur Bhakti" (strength and passion for work)
"Work is Worship"
"Manav seva mein Bhagwaan seva milti hai" (service to mankind is service to God)
"Union is Strength"
"I trust in man only, coz I trust in God"


SUCCESS FACTORS :

• Low cost delivery
• Delivery reliability
• Decentralization
• Perceived equality
• Subarban Railway network

METHOD:

The famous "6 Sigma" Method used by MBA's in MNC's worldwide.

Porter's 5 Force Model :

Competition - Nil to very Low - difficult to replicate.

                                                   - quality remain unchallenged

                                                   - No bargains . Cost effective

                                                   -Low infrastructures and practically no technology, only good   

                                                     planning.

MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES:

• Teamwork
• Time Management
• Innovation
• Customer relationship management
• 6 Sigma
• Logistics and supply chain management

6 Sigma is a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects and to systematically work towards managing variation to eliminate defects.

objective : is to deliver high performance, reliability and value to the end customer.

Ideally 6 sigma performance is calculates numerical defects of 3.467 in 1 million opportunity. 

Mumbai Dabbawalla's beat this goal! 

Their error rate : 1 in 16 million transactions

No history of Strikes

No history of Police/Case records.

Four thousand five hundred semi-literate dabbawalas collect and deliver 175,000 packages within hours. What should we learn from this unique, simple and highly efficient 120-year-old logistics system?

The Dabbawalas who provide a lunch delivery service in Mumbai have been in the business for over 100 years. In 1998, Forbes Global magazine conducted an analysis and gave them a Six Sigma rating of efficiency.

The system the dabbawalas have developed over the years revolves around strong teamwork and strict time-management. At 9am every morning, home-made meals are picked up in special boxes, which are loaded onto trolleys and pushed to a railway station. They then make their way by train to an unloading station. The boxes are rearranged so that those going to similar destinations, indicated by a system of coloured lettering, end up on the same trolley. The meals are then delivered—99.9999% of the time, to the right address.

Harvard Business School has produced a case study of the dabbawalas, urging its students to learn from the organisation, which relies entirely on human endeavour and employs no technology.

"A model of managerial and organizational simplicity" says  Ck Prahlad for the dabbawalas

Six sigma performance

Every day, battling the traffic and crowds of Mumbai city, the Dabbawalas^, also known as Tiffin wallahs^,  unfailingly delivered thousands of dabbas to hungry people and later returned the empty dabbas to where they came from. The Dabbawalas delivered either home-cooked meals from clients' homes or lunches ordered for a monthly fee, from women who cook at their homes according to the clients' specifications. The Dabbawalas' service was used by both working people and school children.

• In 1998, Forbes Global magazine, conducted a quality assurance study on the Dabbawalas' operations and gave it a Six Sigma efficiency rating of 99.999999; the Dabbawalas made one error in six million transactions.
• In 1998, two Dutch filmmakers, Jascha De Wilde and Chris Relleke made a documentary called 'Dabbawallahs, Mumbai's unique lunch service'.
• In July 2001, The Christian Science Monitor, an international newspaper published from Boston, Mass., USA, covered the Dabbawalas in an article called 'Fastest Food: It's Big Mac vs. Bombay's dabbawallahs'.
• In 2002, Jonathan Harley, a reporter, did a story on the Dabbawalas with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). In 2003, BBC also aired a program on the Dabbawalas, which was part of a series on unique businesses of the world.
• In 2003, Paul S. Goodman and Denise Rousseau, both faculty at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration of Carnegie Mellon University, made their first full-length documentary called 'The Dabbawallas'. Instead of asking how knowledge in developing countries can help less developed countries, this film focuses on how developed countries can learn from less developed countries".
• Back home, the Dabbawalas were invited to speak at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) meets and at leading Indian business schools such as IIM, Bangalore and Lucknow.

The organisation structure and the working style..

The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers' Charity Trust had a very flat structure with only three levels, the Governing Council, the Mukadams and the Dabbawalas . From the Governing Council, a President and a Secretary were elected. The Governing Council held meetings once a month which were attended by the Mukadams and Dabbawalas. At these meetings, the Dabbawalas discussed their problems and explored possible solutions. The problems could be with the police, municipal corporation, customers, etc. They also adjudicated disputes among Dabbawalas using their own system. The Trust collected Rs.15 from each Dabbawala every month to maintain a welfare fund...

Here is a video of "A day in the life of Mumbai Dabbawalas." .This will give you a clear picture about their efforts and their working style.

Uninterrupted services

Would you expect your tiffin man to deliver tiffin to you on a heavy monsoon day?

The answer would be No.  Except for people using the dabbawalas service. Because they have  a record of uninterrupted even on the days of severe weather such as Mumbai's characteristic monsoons. The local dabbawalas at the receiving and the sending ends are known to the customers personally, so that there is no question of lack of trust.

Team work

The entire system depends on teamwork and meticulous timing. Tiffins are collected from homes between 7.00 am and 9.00 am, and taken to the nearest railway station. At various intermediary stations, they are hauled onto platforms and sorted out for area-wise distribution, so that a single tiffin could change hands three to four times in the course of its daily journey.

At Mumbai's downtown stations, the last link in the chain, a final relay of dabbawalas fan out to the tiffins' destined bellies. Lunch hour over, the whole process moves into reverse and the tiffins return to suburban homes by 6.00 pm.

Elegant logistics

In the dabbawalas' elegant logistics system, using 25 kms of public transport, 10 km of footwork and involving multiple transfer points, mistakes rarely happen. According to a Forbes 1998 article, one mistake for every eight million deliveries is the norm. How do they achieve virtual six-sigma quality with zero documentation? For one, the system limits the routing and sorting to a few central points. Secondly, a simple color code determines not only packet routing but packet prioritising as lunches transfer from train to bicycle to foot.

So friends what all can you learn from them? Aren't they great..!!!

In this high technologically advanced time these people are working absolutely without it. They have an excellent supply chain, they dont even know what it means. Most of the people working with them are semi-literate but still they read the tiffin code correctly and deliver it Their attitude of competitive collaboration is equally unusual, particularly in India. 

The operation process is competitive at the customers' end but united at the delivery end, ensuring their survival since a century and more. Is their business model worth replicating in the digital age is the big question.

There are many more things to learn from them...What do you say?