SUPPLY CHAIN management of mumbai dabbawalas

2. A CASE ON MUMBAI
DABBAWALAS
PRESENTED BY
Dheeraj Shelar - 33
INDIAN
INSTITUTE OF
PLANTATION
MANAGEMENT,
BANGALORE

3. INTRODUCTION
• A Parsi banker employed a person to bring home-made
food to site of work.
• His colleagues too liked this idea and started availing this
service. Started a lunch delivery service with about 100
men in 1890.
• Charitable trust registered in 1956 as NMTBSA (Nutan
Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association) & it was being
headed by president, Raghunath Medge, who was assisted
by a general secretary, a treasurer and a director. Almost
they covered 60 -70 kms. Total strength of employees 5000,
number of dabbas 2,00,000 i.e. (4,00,000 transaction a
day). Time taken 3 hours.

4. SUPPLY CHAINMANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
• Phase I
Dabbas from housewives and delivery at the destination with a reverse
process of empty dabbas back to the housewives. The goal is -accuracy
with 100% customer satisfaction.
• Phase II
1. Network design structures
2. Process Capability
3. Geography
4. Transport
5. Redundancy
6. Supplier Selection
7. Standardization of materials
8. Transportation
9. Quality

5. Coding magic
BVI: Borivali, a suburb in Mumbai. This denotes the residential station
9 RC 14: Code for Dabbawalas at destination. This user code is different
for each customer
RC: Raheja Chambers, name of a building or office
14: Floor Number
E: Code for Dabbawala at Destination station. For example, E is a code
for Nariman Point, Churchgate
Jain: Name/Surname of the customer

6. Swot analysis

7. Awards and FELICITATION
• CASE STUDY – ICFAI Press Hyderabad & Richard Ivey School of Business –Ontarion,
Harvard Business School.
• Documentaries made by BBC ,UTV, MTV, ZEE TV, AAJ TAK, TV TODAY, SAHARA
SAMAY, STAR TV, CNBC TV 18, CNN, SONY TV, TV TOKYO, NDTV.
• Included in a subject in Graduate School of Journalism University of California, Berkeley.
• Invited for the Terra Madre World meeting of food communities in Italy between October 20-
23, 2004.
• Invited to marriage of Hon. Price Charles of England on 9, April 2005.
• Invitation from CII for conference held in Bangalore, IIML, IIMA, CII Cochin, CII Delhi, Dr.
Reddy’s Lab.,

8. Cont…
• Foundation Hyderabad, SCMHRD Pune, SCMHRD Nasik, Sadahana
–Poone.
Name in “GUINESS BOOK of World Records”.
• Part of the “Community of Cooked Food distributors from Mumbai”.
• Radio – German Radio Network, Radio Mirchi, Radio Mid-day, FM –
Gold, BBC Radio.
• Registered with Ripley's “believe it or not”.
• Shri.Varkari Prabhodhan Mahasmati Dindi (palkhi) sohala–4th march
–2001.
• World record in best time management.

9. Conclusion
• The incredible distribution network of dabbawalas operates
primarily on Hub and Spoke model with railway station, the
point of aggregation and sorting of dabbas as hubs and its
delivery to different destinations as spokes.
• The model thrives on the fact that it is practically impossible
for daily office goers, who love home-cooked food, to carry
their lunch boxes in the over-crowded local trains of Mumbai.

10. Cont…
• There is only one error in every 600,000 deliveries—a service standard
which has earned them the Six Sigma Certification for Quality. The
leading business schools like Stanford and the Indian Institutes of
Management invite them for lectures and workshops on supply chain
management. It can well be qualified as considerable acclaim and
brand muscle for an organization that has only recently learned to a
create website in order to keep pace with the changing world. But for
the dabbawalas, nothing seems impossible. As their Chief Information
Officer told me recently, “If the commitment is there then qualification
can be built.”

11. Thank You…!