The Mumbai dabbawallahs seem to be a stuff of fantasy. Every supply chain conference and training seems to be incomplete without a mention of their supposedly fantastic performance. Their par six sigma performance is a dream achievement for every supply chain professional. They have seemed to have achieved an iconic level of excellence with 'uneducated' operators and no technology.
Let me make my position clear. Yes, the dabbawallahs have surely achieved operations excellence. But, they have been able to do so because of some benign business conditions. Most other business are not blessed with the simple and stable pattern existing in the dabbawallahs business. Thus the dabbawallahs are able to excel in Operations without strategy, technology or any type of documented processes.
The same dabbawallah visits the same houses every day at the same fixed time. He collects the lunch box (dabba) and relays it through the same train to the same office at the exact same address. The dimensions of the products are also more or less the same. This 'same' based operation continues every single day. The only variation is that a customer may not have a lunch to deliver on some days. No business enjoys such luxury of stability.
The arrival of customers, the time taken to serve the customers and the type of service or products demanded by the customers all vary in 'normal' businesses. Without variation, or with low variation, business is easier to plan. With stable conditions a business can easily avoid all excess inventory, excess resources and product stock outs.
Let us assume that a beauty salon has exactly one customer coming every ten minutes for exactly the same style of hair treatment and that the treatment takes exactly 30 minutes. In this case the salon can easily employ a staff of 3 people and deliver excellent customer service with very high level of resource utilisation - leading to six sigma operations with high profits.
An average FMCG firm would have hundreds of SKUs for customers to randomly choose from. The distribution network with multiple independent profit making entities would also have their own buying pattern and behaviour. And, of course, the customers have no compulsion to order in a stable pattern. Thus these businesses are considerably more difficult. The dabbawallahs do the same thing every day. Thus they can easily work from memory. Since businesses have a high number of variables, they need the support of technology to make decisions.
The dabbalwallahs would be very praiseworthy if they were picking up lunch from different houses every day as per some random pattern and also if the delivery addresses were different. To add to the fun it would be wonderful to have the trains running at varying time tables. What the dabbawallahs have achieved is good but nothing incredible. Their model of operation may be a benchmark for abnormal conditions of stability, but is absolutely useless in normal business conditions.
Let me make my position clear. Yes, the dabbawallahs have surely achieved operations excellence. But, they have been able to do so because of some benign business conditions. Most other business are not blessed with the simple and stable pattern existing in the dabbawallahs business. Thus the dabbawallahs are able to excel in Operations without strategy, technology or any type of documented processes.
The same dabbawallah visits the same houses every day at the same fixed time. He collects the lunch box (dabba) and relays it through the same train to the same office at the exact same address. The dimensions of the products are also more or less the same. This 'same' based operation continues every single day. The only variation is that a customer may not have a lunch to deliver on some days. No business enjoys such luxury of stability.
The arrival of customers, the time taken to serve the customers and the type of service or products demanded by the customers all vary in 'normal' businesses. Without variation, or with low variation, business is easier to plan. With stable conditions a business can easily avoid all excess inventory, excess resources and product stock outs.
Let us assume that a beauty salon has exactly one customer coming every ten minutes for exactly the same style of hair treatment and that the treatment takes exactly 30 minutes. In this case the salon can easily employ a staff of 3 people and deliver excellent customer service with very high level of resource utilisation - leading to six sigma operations with high profits.
An average FMCG firm would have hundreds of SKUs for customers to randomly choose from. The distribution network with multiple independent profit making entities would also have their own buying pattern and behaviour. And, of course, the customers have no compulsion to order in a stable pattern. Thus these businesses are considerably more difficult. The dabbawallahs do the same thing every day. Thus they can easily work from memory. Since businesses have a high number of variables, they need the support of technology to make decisions.
The dabbalwallahs would be very praiseworthy if they were picking up lunch from different houses every day as per some random pattern and also if the delivery addresses were different. To add to the fun it would be wonderful to have the trains running at varying time tables. What the dabbawallahs have achieved is good but nothing incredible. Their model of operation may be a benchmark for abnormal conditions of stability, but is absolutely useless in normal business conditions.
