Here are two examples of how operations try to reduce the negative effects of having to cope with high levels of variety. Research each of them (there is plenty of information on the web) and answer the following questions:

(a) What are the common features of these two examples?

(b) What other examples of standardisation in transport operations can you think of?

Example 1

– The Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association (search under dabbawallas) operates a service to transport home-cooked food from workers’ homes to office locations in downtown Mumbai. Workers from residential districts must ride commuter trains to work. They can be conservative diners, who may also be constrained by cultural taboos on food handling. Their workers, known as dabbawallas, pick up the food in the morning in a regulation tin ‘tiffin’ box, deposit it at the office at lunchtime, and return it to the home in the afternoon. The dabbawallas take advantage of public transport to carry the tins, usually using otherwise underutilised capacity on commuter trains in the mid-morning and afternoon. Different colours and markings are used to indicate to the (sometimes illiterate) dabbawallas the process route for each tin.

Example 2

– Ports have had to handle an infinite variety of ships and cargoes with widely different contents, sizes and weights, and protect them from weather and pilferage, while in transit or in storage.

Then the transportation industries, in conjunction with the International Organization for Standardization

(ISO), developed a standard shipping container design. Almost overnight the problems of security and weather protection were solved. Anyone wanting to ship goods in volume only had to seal them into a container and they could be signed over to the shipping company. Ports could standardise handling equipment and dispense with warehouses (containers could be stacked in the rain if required). Railways and trucking companies could develop trailers to accommodate the new containers.