Mumbai Dabbawallas - An amazing story

I recently attended the "Mumbai dabbawallas" discussion at EMC. I was just amazed to learn that Forbes magazine gave the Mumbai dabbawallas a Six Sigma performance rating, or a 99.999999 percentage of correctness — which means one error in six million transactions.
How can some 4,000 dabbawallas who pick up more than 100,000 lunches at homes in Mumbai achieve six sigma?? Its just incredible, but true. The whole process of picks up lunches, transporting and delivering them is a very complicated system of working, which is made possible(very successful, infact) by human ingenuity and supportive social arrangements. They just prove that you don't need computers, information technology and other forms of technology to make a complicated system work.

Making the dabbawallas’ success even more impressive is the fact that Mumbai is continually growing and becoming more congested. Yet, the dabbawallas deliver lunches to the right person at the right time.

Now a days, in the midst of implementing technology and IT, basic principles in people management, sustainable relationship development and customer satisfaction have lost their meaning. Being a Oracle CRM guy, the most enduring lesson I learnt was to put the customer ahead of everything else and technology is not the only way to solve complex problems.

At the end of the discussion, i could't stop smiling at the fact that billion dollar US companies like EMC are learning from Mumbai dabbawallas. NICE!!!
Proud of you, dabbawallas!