preparing the worker a fresh, home- cooked lunch. What happens next for demonstrates the coordination of the dabbawallas system. The first dabbawalla picks up the tiffin from home and takes it to the nearest railway station.The second dabbawalla sorts out the dabbas at the railway station according to destination and puts them in the luggage carriage. The third one travels with the dabbas to the railway stations nearest to the destinations.
The fourth one picks up dabbas from the railway station and drops them off at the offices. By mid-morning, thousands of dabbawallas are bicycling through the streets of Mumbai, ensuring a hot home cooked lunch for their customers. The whole tiffin distribution requires negligible technology. The dabbawallas rely on low capital and use cycles, wooden carriages and local trains to achieve their target.There are several groups that work independently and network with each other to achieve their goal.
Each area is divided into several small distribution sectors and each sector is handled by a particular person. This person understands the address in that locality very well. Also, this perfection comes with practice. Many new employees work for months under the guidance of their seniors.
Punctuality and time management are on top of the agenda for dabbawallas. Whatever be the circumstances, the dabbawallas never get delayed even by a few minutes. ‘DABBAWALLAS’ – Excellence through Coordination and sections. In an organisation there may be separate departments of finance, production, marketing or human resources.
All these departments may have their own objectives, policies and their own style of working. For example, the marketing department’s objective may be to increase sales by per cent by offering discounts. But, the finance department may not approve of such discounts as it means loss of revenue. These kinds of conflict arise in organisations because each unit/ department is performing activities in isolation from others and barriers between departments are becoming more rigid.
However, all departments and individuals are interdependent and they have to depend on each other for information to perform their activities. The activity each department needs be focused on attainment of