Dabbawala
The Dabbawala System: Analysis and Recommendations
Executive Summary
The dabbawala delivery system can be improved by focusing on transportation, turnover and technology. The on time, every time mission of delivering dabbas faces many travel issues each day such as: bicycles that have limited space, delayed pick up from food makers due to water supply, road work, and railway strikes. As the culture in Mumbai continues to change and the city experience growth, turnover has become a problem within the workforce of the dabbawalas. This change in culture has also increased the use of technology and it has been increasingly noticeable that the dabbawala’s need to embrace this movement to increase sales and customer relations.
Our recommendations for the dabbawala delivery system would be to migrate to motorized buggy carts to increase carrying capacity of dabbas and speed up the delivery process. In regards to turnover, we believe that the leaders should learn to speak English and provide English classes to the employees. This will help reduce the turnover within the workforce as the driving factors are other educational and professional opportunities being provide elsewhere in Mumbai. English classes will also help address the technology aversion of the employees. Training them on the current website has been difficult due to illiteracy. Therefore, the technology currently in place has been unutilized, as it is English-based software. Providing training on the current website would allow the company to make changes to update the software in the future that might actually generate results if utilized.
Organizational Overview
“Each day throughout the city of Mumbai, India, 5,000 individuals called dabbawalas delivered some 130,000 dabbas (lunch boxes filled with home-cooked food) to offices throughout the metropolis” (p. 1, Thomke & Sinha, 2013). The dabbawalas, “one who carries a box”, are a semiliterate workforce that focuses on on-time delivery and
Executive Summary
The dabbawala delivery system can be improved by focusing on transportation, turnover and technology. The on time, every time mission of delivering dabbas faces many travel issues each day such as: bicycles that have limited space, delayed pick up from food makers due to water supply, road work, and railway strikes. As the culture in Mumbai continues to change and the city experience growth, turnover has become a problem within the workforce of the dabbawalas. This change in culture has also increased the use of technology and it has been increasingly noticeable that the dabbawala’s need to embrace this movement to increase sales and customer relations.
Our recommendations for the dabbawala delivery system would be to migrate to motorized buggy carts to increase carrying capacity of dabbas and speed up the delivery process. In regards to turnover, we believe that the leaders should learn to speak English and provide English classes to the employees. This will help reduce the turnover within the workforce as the driving factors are other educational and professional opportunities being provide elsewhere in Mumbai. English classes will also help address the technology aversion of the employees. Training them on the current website has been difficult due to illiteracy. Therefore, the technology currently in place has been unutilized, as it is English-based software. Providing training on the current website would allow the company to make changes to update the software in the future that might actually generate results if utilized.
Organizational Overview
“Each day throughout the city of Mumbai, India, 5,000 individuals called dabbawalas delivered some 130,000 dabbas (lunch boxes filled with home-cooked food) to offices throughout the metropolis” (p. 1, Thomke & Sinha, 2013). The dabbawalas, “one who carries a box”, are a semiliterate workforce that focuses on on-time delivery and
References: Brynjolfsson, E. (July 2003). The IT Productivity GAP. ROI Valuations. Issue 21 Dabbawala Foundation (2012). Dabbawala Foundation, Mumbai. Retrieved September 6, 2014 from: http://www.dabbawala.in/index.php Mumbai Dabbawala. Retrived September 6, 2014 from: http://mumbaidabbawala.in/about-us/ Thomke, S., & Sinha, M. (2013). The dabbawala system: On-time delivery, every time. Harvard Business School, doi: 9-610-059 Appendix