Enough has been written about the efficient operation of the Mumbai Dabbawalas and how their dabba (tiffin/lunch box) delivery is 6sigma certified thanks to the error less operation they carry out.
There is a very bad TEDxSSN talk as well.
I always wondered how the semi literate villagers could gain this efficiency in operation till I discovered that the accuracy of their entire operation relied upon trust.
Yes there is a complex and efficient coding system. But this system was meant when for a time when there were individual houses on a street in Mumbai or when a few houses in a chawl sent out dabbas. Not the towering skyscrapers as now.
See the coding system in slides 20-21 in this presentation: The Dabbawallas Sep06
The coding system essentially ensures that the dabba reached the destination building reception / floor for lunch and back at source street. But at both the end points there is a huge qualitative factor that is not accounted for. The owner has to identification his/her own dabba and pick it up. So ultimately the dabbawala trusts that the originator and end user is notpicking up some one elses dabba. So much for process excellence certification!
ps: By the way, almost all the presentations on the web are rip offs of each other and each of the speaker claiming to be
