Replying to [adseaco]:

Yes, this is something really good to applaud.

That's why even the British Prime Minister on his visit to India met them personally and even invited them to visit his royal palace in UK.

NatGeo has also made a documentary describing their work culture.

Replying to [adseaco]:Gr8 info, really nice.

Quoting from [adseaco]:


Dabbawallahs since 1890

(Tiffin Box Suppliers)

Please tell us how they did it, puts all the computer nerds to shame. No computers means no virus attack, brown-outs, hackers, etc.


Someone owed me the explanation on the SIGMA SIX system, which I heard to be a superior system as it has customer feedback and competition among teams with colour bands. Please tell us about the Sigma Six.


Street Smart

Replying to [Street Smart]:

Six Sigma certification is given to those organisations who has 3.4 or lesser defects in 1 million of their processes.

As pointed here that "dabbawallahs" have the chances of lunch boxes getting mixed up approximately 1 in 16 million which means that they are performing beyond excellence than as desired by six sigma certification.

Here you can read more about six sigma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma

And the story of "dabbawallahs" is stated as under:

Dabbawallahs: Mumbai's best managed business

Prince Charles is not the first person to show an interest in the dabbawallahs of Mumbai. In fact, the first time they actually shot to international fame was when his compatriots at the BBC did a documentary on them way back in the late 70s.

But it was in the 1990s, when management lexicon became a part of daily life, that the interest in Dabbawallahs, now synonymous with Mumbai's blurringly fast life, grew.

Today, they are feted regularly and invited to lecture students of business management. Corporate chiefs applaud them, management gurus use them as a models.

So what makes the dabbawallahs so unique? And how do they work?

At the simplest, the dabbawallahs deliver home-cooked meals to individuals at their workplaces and return empty tiffin boxes to homes and, in some cases, caterers.

For this, they charge Rs 300 to Rs 350, that is $ 6-7, a month.

The workforce of the tiffin box suppliers trust, the cooperative body that runs the system, is 5,000. Each tiffin box contains two or three containers, often carrying traditional Indian fare -- rice, curry, chapattis, and vegetables.

Housewives even send notes to their hubbies in these boxes.

The process begins early in the morning. Cooked food is picked up from houses and caterers by dabbawallahs and taken to the nearest railway station. There, the different tiffin boxes are sorted out for specific destination stations and loaded on to large, rectangular trays accordingly.

Each tray can hold up to 40 boxes. These trays then travel in local trains down to various stations. At each station, there are another set of dabbawallahs who quickly take the dabbas meant to be distributed in that area and push in dabbas meant for other stations.

A Mumbai local halts at a station for about 20 seconds or less and thus, the dabbawallahs have to work with precision and speed. During rush hour, it's a nightmare. Ask anyone who has done time on Mumbai locals.

Contd..2

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At each station, the boxes are once more sorted for localities and offices and taken there by handcarts or sometimes carried by individuals.

The boxes are placed in the offices' reception area by 12.30 pm and are picked up from the same spot by the deliverer a couple of hours later.

The whole process then starts again in the reverse. The boxes are picked up from the offices, taken to the nearest station and sorted for their journey home.

Forbes **** gave this service its highest quality rating of Sigma 6, which means that per million transactions, there is just an error of one.

The service runs every working day.

Every day, they deliver 175,000 to 200,000 lunch boxes. They use colours and code markings to ensure faultless delivery.

These codes would baffle a cryptographer! But they make perfect sense to the dabbawallahs. The codes and colours indicate the place from where a dabba is collected; the station where it must be unloaded and the office it is to be delivered.

The one part of the code is that they use are English alphabets to mark out stations -- such as A for Andheri and Bo for Borivli.

The men who form part of the organisation are not employees. If they have employees, then they have unions and strikes. Instead they are all shareholders in the Trust and thus share in the earnings.

On an average, a dabbawallah can make about Rs 3,000 to 5,000. The Trust provides several services to its members, including schools for the children and health care in emergencies.

What makes the dabbawallahs an extremely tight-knit group is that they all hail from the same region, Pune district in Maharashtra.

If an outsider does join in, then they initially employ him on a fixed salary, and if in a couple of years he wins their trust, then they make him a shareholder.

The dabbawallah service began way back in 1890, when Mumbai was a much smaller city. Today, the service delivers not just homemade food but also picks up food from caterers and delivers them to offices.

As long as the dabbawallah service is there, Mumbaikars alone in the world would have the option of eating homemade food in office without the bother of having to carry a cumbersome lunchbox.

Information Soruce: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/nov/04dabba.htm

Replying to [Street Smart]:I am not a Six Sigma practitioner but, the little that I read about this :
Companies and people with obsessive compulsive needs to reduce costs and improve efficiencies—implement Six Sigma.
Six SIGMA works across industries:
When, Starbucks decided to reduce the number of days it took to open a store from 14 to 12; they found they could open a thousand more stores in a year, deploying no additional resources. For Starbucks, with 12,440 outlets globally, this represents a huge benefit in costs.
Six Sigma is a measure of perfection. Firms with Six Sigma processes make less than four mistakes in every million tasks that they perform and so are right 99.99996 % of the time.
Companies/Firms can’t keep high margins forever, even if they are run by smart people. High margins in industries with low-entry barriers will mean others will enter that space.
Lean Six Sigma has applications for both manufacturing and the service industries.
Strong weightage is given to companies that use Six Sigma processes, because in the long run, process driven companies are the only companies that are successful.
Markets for Six Sigma implementation in India is estimated at $ 15 – 20 million according to Six Sigma practioners.
Unlike ISO or CMM certifications which emphasizes more on marketing needs of the companies--Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma adds to the bottom line.
The gains in efficiency are almost immediate, with returns accruing to the company after just one quarter of implementation of Lean Six Sigma processes.

Quoting from [adseaco]:


Six SIGMA works across industries:

When, Starbucks decided to reduce the number of days it took to open a store from 14 to 12; they found they could open a thousand more stores in a year, deploying no additional resources. For Starbucks, with 12,440 outlets globally, this represents a huge benefit in costs.

Please explain what are green belt, black belt and Master black belt.


Six Sigma is a measure of perfection. Firms with Six Sigma processes make less than four mistakes in every million tasks that they perform and so are right 99.99996 % of the time.

We have ISO9000 and ISO9001 what differentiate Six Sigma from ISO? Where do they share similarities with each other?

Companies/Firms can’t keep high margins forever, even if they are run by smart people. High margins in industries with low-entry barriers will mean others will enter that space.

Is Six Sigma expensive to achieve? What could small firms do to achieve Six Sigma and are they within their reach to be affordable?

Lean Six Sigma has applications for both manufacturing and the service industries.

Strong weightage is given to companies that use Six Sigma processes, because in the long run, process driven companies are the only companies that are successful.

Does Six Sigma boost the strategic advantage of the firm over their competitors in the business?

Markets for Six Sigma implementation in India is estimated at $ 15 – 20 million according to Six Sigma practioners.

What is the estimated cost to implement the Six Sigma, and the time taken for feasible studies and implementation?

Unlike ISO or CMM certifications which emphasizes more on marketing needs of the companies--Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma adds to the bottom line.

The gains in efficiency are almost immediate, with returns accruing to the company after just one quarter of implementation of Lean Six Sigma processes.

This answers my question above on the similiarity and difference between Six Sigma and ISO certification, which is very commonly sorted by companies in this region.


Street Smart

Can any transport -Bus, Train, Airplane Do that 99.9%
without delay.....

Replying to [Braham S Aggarwal]:

Very interesting topic and I have read it many times Keep it up

Replying to [Tell me why]:

Well, the topic belongs to adseaco. I only added more information to it.

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By the way, I like your avatar.