Friday 28 August 2015

The Mumbai Dabbawalas - Redefining Traditional Management with exceptional excellence

Majority of Organizations today are becoming result oriented with least number of errors in their transactions and are able to manage their widely diversified literate workforce with the help of technology, but Dabbawalas prove to be an odd pick out of them.
 
Imagine delivering 200,000 hot lunches every day on time –in a city where traffic is regularly jam packed. And then imagine having to pick up and return the food containers, collect the money, and pay the drivers – most of whom cannot read or write, without adopting any technology?
 
Dabbawalas deliver more than 2,00,000 lunch boxes with the help of 5,000 Dabbawalas per day. The Organization’s Turnover is about Fifty Crores annually.

The American business magazine 'Forbes' has given a six-sigma performance (Error rate: 1 in 16 million transaction i.e 99.999999%) rating to them along with multinationals like Motorola and GE. The Dabbawalas were also featured in a 'BBC' documentary, 'Ripley's Believe it or not' and mentioned in the 'Guinness World Records'.

Dabbawalas have this exceptional ability of effectively managing their illiterate and semiliterate work force, delivering services on time, without any compromise, standardizing their services at a minimal cost, non dependence on technology and motor vehicles (no fuel costs, dabbawallas use cycles as their mode of transport), and  maintaining 100% customer satisfaction in this complex business world.

Today the Dabbawalas have welcomed the use of internet technology only for increasing their customer base and nothing more. 

Mumbai Dabbawalas redefine the saying “Old is Gold” as they still follow the traditional ways of Management which is a core element that contributes to their performance excellence. Effective hierarchy, Co-ordination and Support, Work ethics, Discipline and Time Management are some of the note worthy management lessons that are to be learnt from them.

                                                                                                                       - Ram Kishore
                                                                                                       kishore.sid2@gmail.com

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