These are the men who deliver 175,000 lunches (or "tiffin") every day to offices and schools throughout Mumbai, the business capital of India. Lunch is transported in a tin container consisting of a number of bowls, each containing a separate dish, held together in a supporting frame. The meals are prepared each morning in the commuter's home by their family once (s)he has left for his commute into Mumbai. It is then collected by the tiffinwallah later that morning and delivered to their place of work or study in time for lunch. Afterwards, the process is reversed and the tin container returned to the commuter's home address.
The process is amazing despite the complexity. The 5,000 tiffinwallahs working today make a mistake on average of only once every two months, according to the President of the Mumbai Tiffinmen's Association. That's only one error in every 8 million deliveries, or 16 million if you include the return trip. "If we made 10 mistakes a month, no one would use our service" he says.
How do they do it?
The meals are picked up from commuters' homes in suburbs around central Mumbai long after the commuters have left for work, delivered to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before the commuters return.
Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols which identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and destination stations and the address to which it is to be delivered.
After the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest railway station, where they are sorted according to the destination station. Between 10:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. they are loaded in crates onto the baggage cars of trains.
At the destination station they are unloaded by other tiffinwallahs and re-sorted, this time according to street address and floor. The 100- kilogram crates of carriers, carried on tiffinwallahs' heads, hand- wagons and cycles are delivered at 12:30 p.m., picked up at 1:30 p.m., and returned whence they came.
The charge for this extraordinary service is just 150 rupees per month, enough for the tiffinwallahs, who are mostly self-employed, to make a good living. After paying Rs60 per crate and Rs120 per man per month to the Western Railway for transport, the average tiffinwallah clears about Rs3,250 a month.
Of that sum, Rs10 goes to the Tiffinmen's Association. After minimal expenses, the rest of the Rs50,000 a month that the Association collects go to a charitable trust that feeds the poor.
Although we don’t have the same daily volumes, ours is a far more varied service. In any one day we might be producing 8,000 DVD’s, packing them into PVC wallets and dispatching those with letters into jiffy bags with labels to 8,000 destinations Nationally. The same day we could be packing promotional materials such as key rings, blow up chairs, t-shirts or books with, CD’s and Blu-ray discs, across multiple language skus and dispatched Worldwide. The complexity should not be underestimated and nor should the skills required to ensure we do an accurate job.
Every box and all packing material is re-cycled and re-used immediately on the same job where possible. Or, stored and re-used over the course of the next few days, or weeks. Our waste management processes are all measured and recorded for our ISO14000.
We can’t claim to deliver by bicycle to save on fuel, but our couriers and the postal service all work to ensure efficiency, and are measured against care for the environment too.
I’m certain there are still many lessons that can be learned from the Tiffinmen's Association, perhaps I am just trying to convince myself that in name of commitment to continuous improvement I should visit Mumbai again.
Submitted by Jo Fone, Managing Director
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