Indian Logistic Solutions land in Paris.
A successful Indian case study concerning an efficient urban delivery system has been analyzed during the 3rd TURBLOG_WW workshop held in Paris on April 2011.
A 3rd project workshop on "Urban Logistics Solutions Case studies" was organized in Paris on the 28th April 2011 by the TURBLOG_WW (Transferability of urban logistics concepts and practices from a worldwide perspective) project team. The event gathered a group of experts which discussed and presented Urban Logistics Solutions from a Worldwide Perspective. Experiences from cities as diverse as New York (U.S), Mumbai (India), Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and Santiago de Chile (Chile) were selected as case studies not only to identify business models and logistic profiles but also to develop a step-wise methodological framework for the transferability of interventions. The Indian case study was presented by Dr. Deepak Baindur, from the Center for infrastructure Sustainable Transportation & Urban Planning (CiSTUP), Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore onthe Mumbai Dabbawalasand explored its transferability to other cities.started A dabbawala, in India, is literally a "person with a box", and most commonly in the city of Mumbai, indicates one who is employed in a unique service industry whose primary business is collecting, transport and delivery of freshly cooked home food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office workers to their respective workplaces and reverse logistics of returning the empty boxes back to the customer's residence by using suburban rail as the main mode of transport. After introducing Mumbai's urban form, urban freight patterns, freight policy and challenges, , Dr. Baindur discussed the Business Model of the lunch box delivery system. He highlighted several success factors that has sustained their business for over 100 years. These werey: - Business is based on a set of strong moral value system. This is a source of motivation to its members; - The delivery system has evolved a simple operational system to handle large operations with negligible error; - The organizational model is almost flat with 3 tiers. It relies on a modular, scalable and flexible system with sufficient extra capacity; - The logistics services are customer centric and employee driven; - Management practices are intuition based (coding system of the lunch boxes) taking the employee skills into consideration; PRESS4TRANSPORT is funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7)
- Several factors specific to Mumbai such as cheap manpower availability, demand for home food, urban transport infrastructure and linear geography have contributed towards establishing this excellent business model based on innovative approach to satisfy a perpetual demand.
In terms of transferability of this case study to other logistics businesses, following points were highlighted: - Utilization of relatively cheap transport system for urban logistics (e.g. public transportation). This would allow cost reductions to make the urban logistics services attractive, which could lead to the generation of formidable business volumes over a period of time. - Scalability of the business and member driven logistic activity. The availability of additional trained personnel allows flexibility to scale up the logistics operations at short notice. Secondly, flat organizational structure and empowerment of personnel to manage their own day to day operations provides harmony, synergy and symphony. - A simple codification system for tracking and tracing deliveries that is well understood by the employees and proven over time. A lesson learnt is to develop a tracking system that is simple, user-friendly, cheap and locally executable.
TURBLOG-WW consortium is coordinated by TIS (PT) with NEA- Transport research and training (Netherlands), University of Leeds (United Kingdom), INOVA+ - Innovation Consulting (PT), PTL UNI - Plataforma Logistica de Transporte, Logistica y Molivilidad Urbana (Peru), BHTRANS - Empresa de Transportes e Trânsito de Belo Horizonte S.A (Brazil) and TIS.BR - (Brazil) and is funded under the 7th Framework Programme. For further information, please contact Chiara Frencia, chiara.frencia@inovamais.pt or turblog@tis.pt. www.turblog.eu
PRESS4TRANSPORT is funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7)