Arab Open University

Faculty of Business Studies

Business Functions in Context I

B203A – First Semester 2016-17

Tutor Marked Assessment

Dabbawalas hit 99.9999% dependability

Mumbai is India’s most densely populated city, and every working day its millions of
commuters’ crowd onto packed trains for an often lengthy commute to their workplaces. Going
home for lunch is not possible; so many office workers have a cooked meal sent either from
their home, or from a caterer. It is Mumbai’s 5,000-strong dabbawala collective that provides
this service, usually for a monthly fee. The meal is cooked in the morning (by family or
caterer), placed in regulation dabbas or tiffin (lunch) boxes and delivered to each individual
worker’s office at lunch time. After lunch the boxes are collected and returned so that they can
be re-sent the next day. ‘Dabbawala’ means ‘one who carries a box’, or more colloquially,
‘lunch box delivery man”. This is how the service works:

7am–9am The dabbas (boxes) are collected by dabbawalas on bicycles from nearly 200,000
suburban homes or from the dabba makers and taken to railway stations. The dabbas have
distinguishing marks on them, using colours and symbols (necessary because many dabbawalas
are barely literate). The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place, where he and
other collecting dabbawalas sort (and sometimes bundle) the lunch boxes into groups.

9am–11am The grouped boxes are put in the coaches of trains, with markings to identify the
destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). The markings include the
Source: Getty Images

rail station where the boxes are to be unloaded and the building address where the box has to be
delivered. This may involve boxes being sorted at intermediary stations, with each single dabba
changing hands up to four times.

10am–12midday Dabbas taken into Mumbai using the otherwise under-utilized capacity on
commuter trains in the mid-morning.

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11am–12midday Arrive downtown Mumbai where dabbas are handed over to local
dabbawalas, who distribute them to more locations where there is more sorting and loading on
to handcarts, bicycles and dabbawalas.

12midday–1pm Dabbas are delivered to appropriate office locations.

2pm Process moves into reverse, after lunch, when the empty boxes are collected from office
locations and returned to suburban stations.

6pm Empty dabbas sent back to the respective houses.

The service has a remarkable record of almost flawlessly reliable delivery, even on the days of
severe weather such as Mumbai’s characteristic monsoons. Dabbawalas all receive the same pay
and at both the receiving and the sending ends, are known to the customers personally, so are
trusted by customers. Also, they are well accustomed to the local areas they collect from or
deliver to, which reduces the chances of errors. Raghunath Medge, the president of the Bombay
Tiffin Box Supply Charity
Trust, which oversees the dabbawallas, highlights the importance of their hands-on operations
management.
‘Proper time management is our key to success. We do everything to keep the customer happy
and they help in our marketing.’ There is no system of documentation. The success of the
operation depends on teamwork and
Human ingenuity. Such is the dedication and commitment of the barefoot delivery men (there
are only a few delivery women) that the complex logistics operation works with only three
layers of management. Although the service remains essentially low-tech, with the barefoot
delivery men as the prime movers, the dabbawalas now use
Some modern technology, for example they now allow booking for delivery through SMS and
their web site.

Slack. N., Stuart, C., and Robert, J. (2010) Operations Management. Harlow, England: Financial
Times Prentice Hall.

II. Discussion Questions

Question 1 (400 words, 40 marks)

Taking the example of the Dabbawala service as an example, discuss the five performance
objectives of an operation.

Question 2 (300 words, 30 marks)

Why does the Dabbawalas’ service offer such an amazing dependability?

Question 3 (300 words, 30 marks)

What do you think are the main threats to this service?

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General instructions for students:
This TMA should be written by students individually.

TMA weight: 20% of total course grade.

Cut-off date: Check LMS

Plagiarism: It’s imperative that you write your answer using your own words. Plagiarism will be
penalized depending on its severity and according to AOU plagiarism policy.

Format: you are expected to write your answer in an essay format: introduction, body
paragraph(s) and a conclusion. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks
from your total TMA mark.

Word count: your answer is expected to be within the specified word count range. Not adhering
to specified word count could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks of your total TMA mark.

Referencing: You are expected to use the Harvard referencing style for in-text referencing and
list of reference at the end. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks of your
total TMA mark.

E-library: You are expected to use E-library sources to support your answers. A minimum of 3
sources is required. Failing to do so could result in the deduction of up to 4 marks of your total
TMA mark.

Amazing Dabbawlas

Do you want to do your job in a perfect way? In order to achieve this goal you have to eat
because the food is the most important thing that can make your body works well, especially
during work hours. But sometimes there is a problems that can prevent you from eating which
are the time and the lack of restaurants near your job, Mumbai dabbawlas can solve this problem
because they are organization that works on deliver the traditional Indian food to the worker
offices at lunch time. In this essay I will take the Mumbai dabbawlas as case study and I want to
discuss the objective performance of their operation and the dependability of the service and the
threats that can face this business.

At the beginning, every business wants to be successful, but in order to be successful there are
many objectives must be achieved which are quality, speed, flexibility, dependability and the
cost those objectives evaluates the performance of the business. Let us discuss the performance
objectives of an operation in our case study of dabbwlas Mumbai . firstly, the speed of this
service we can notice that they have time schedule for every point of their operation for example

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,there is time for collecting the boxes and time for coloring them and specific time for putting
the dabbas in rail way station so they are fast because they deliver the food every day at lunch
time. Secondly, we want to discuss the cost of this service, the dabbwlas provide this service for
a very good price and the dabbawlas customer pay about 7$ to 9$ per month other businesses
provide this service but have charged more so the dabbawlas prefer from the majority of the
worker. After that, we want to discuss the quality of this service. dabbawlas of Mumbai deliver
more than 130000 lunch boxes every day In a very big and crowded city like Mumbai and the
they deliver the boxes without any mistakes and they did not use any kind of technology or even
cell phone and although, the dabbwlas are low level educated . and the dabbawalas service is
very flexible to the customer needs for example the customer selected the kind of food he wants
and the dabbawlas colored the special food in different colours in order to deliver the exact food
to the correct customer and they deliver the food for any area in Mumbai wherever is close or far
because they are interested to keep their customer satisfied .and the last objectives is the
dependability All the customer depends on the dabbawlas every day because they are on time
and they deliver the food free of errors and mistakes and the dabbawlas are trusted from the
worker and they provide all what the customers want and expect.

The most important component of any business is the customer because if there is no
customer there is no business so that all companies cares about their customer and they study
their needs and look after about their problems and the complains they provide some companies
make scurvies to ensure that the customers are satisfied , because of this reason dabbwlas of
Mumbai took care about their customer and delivered the food on time and hot and to the correct
location in order to increase their customer and to keep them satisfied and that what the president
of Mumbai tiffin box charity MR Raughnat Midge said ‘ we do everything to keep our customer
happy and they help in our marketing ‘ . So that is why dabawalas of Mumbai provide this
dependability.

The location of any business in the market but the market include many competitor and the
action of this competitor called threats and sometimes the threats of our competitor called an
opportunities for our business or company and the threat of our case study is the existing of the
quick service restaurant like McDonalds and KFC and burger king which are very fast restaurant
and they have branches everywhere and they have call centers to deliver the food and another
threat for dabbawals service is food court in the Malls so that the employee of the mall can eat in
the food court which include many restaurant and the last threat for this business is the new
generation of the indian which doesn’t like to work as dabbawlas .

To sum up, tiffin box charity is very good and successful business and it has a very big
history in India goes back to 125 years in the market with very food quality and amazing
reputation from the worker which are very satisfied from this service but they have to take action
that develop the business and the can make this service keep up to date and in order to facing
their competitor in the market.

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List of references:

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