Mumbai’s famous dabbawallahs have established a code of conduct after preliminary police investigations into the recent Zaveri Bazaar bomb blast revealed that the bomb may have been planted in a tiffin box.
Mumbai’s famous dabbawallahs have established a code of conduct after preliminary police investigations into the recent Zaveri Bazaar bomb blast revealed that the bomb may have been planted in a tiffin box.
At a meeting late on Friday, it was decided that they will only deliver tiffin boxes after confirming the pick-up as well as the delivery address.
Also, if a temporary change of address is asked for or if the customer is new, the tiffin box will have to be opened and shown to the dabbawallahs if they ask. “We will be left with no choice but to deny services to those who crib about these conditions,” Raghunath Medghe, president of the dabbawallahs umbrella body, Nutan Tiffin Box Suppliers Association, told DNA.
Directives in this regard have been sent to all the 5,000-plus members of the association who transport more than 1.5 lakh tiffin boxes every day.
Famed for the systematic way in which they ensure that every tiffin box goes to the right person at the right place at the right time, despite varying points of origin, an elaborate and complex trans-shipment on the local trains of Mumbai and the vagaries of the seasons, like water-logging during monsoon, the service covers the length and breadth of the city.
Medghe, who presided over the meeting with the committee and other colleagues, explained, “When we heard reports that the terrorists had used tiffin boxes to plant bombs, we decided to call for a meeting to discuss the issue before it skyrocketed into a bigger problem inconveniencing the customers as well as us. We have asked all members to be alert while taking a job from unknown people. In this service we’ve never taken any document from the customer for proof, because these things didn’t happen in the past with such frequency. We will be more vigilant now.”
Across the world, dabbawallahs are famous for their zero-error ‘Six Sigma Service’. Many business school management experts visit the city to see and learn from them. They’ve also been invited by various colleges and corporates for presentations of their skills.
The University of Michigan Business School believes that the dabbawallahs are the perfect case study of the principles of supply chain management.
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