Knowledge management in global dimensions

Mercedes-Benz works together with leading tyre manufacturers in its Mercedes Benz Tires Program to develop tyres specially tailored to its own vehicle fleet and sell them internationally. To this end, local teams in many countries and on various markets around the world work around a central unit. 3pc helped to fluidly organise the flow of information from the head office to local marketing, even during a generational change within the teams: Thanks to new workflows and digital options, the existing knowledge for international marketing can be utilised even more efficiently in future.

Knowledge - spread across the globe

How do you make an incredible amount of international company knowledge, distributed across a head office and international teams, more usable globally in a global corporation? How do you preserve the skills of departing employees who have not only accumulated expertise over the years, but also valuable personal contacts and experience in their field?

A treasure trove between centralised control and individual customisation

It is always a challenge to preserve the knowledge spread across many departments and people within a company - a group's greatest treasure. In a globally active group, local conditions, such as the customs of local markets when selling a product, can also play a major role. It is therefore also necessary to balance internationally consistent procedures and individually sensible variants. Ideally, good ideas or best practice examples from individual country teams will also be made available on the other side of the globe.

Onboarding as a litmus test

At Mercedes Benz, the great complexity of such processes first became apparent at a point where knowledge transfer is right at the top of the agenda: onboarding. This is because new colleagues can only be integrated into existing structures immediately and efficiently if knowledge is passed on quickly.

Information flow as a general challenge

3pc therefore supported the globally active team of the Mercedes Benz Tires Program in optimising its knowledge management - whereby an extended focus on the general flow of information within and between the teams of the development department developed in the course of the process.

The path from actual to target

An analysis phase with a shoulder view and interviews with employees on various workflows formed the basis on which we followed up with a workshop for the co-creative development of the desired target status and solution approaches, concretised according to fields of action.

Recommendations that make you want to change

The recommendations for action we compiled include, for example, the use of selected digital options, as well as options for efficient, lean processes and tools for their implementation. The options for action presented now serve the Mercedes Benz Tyres Programme as a basis for decision-making, on the basis of which its members can actively contribute to the further development of knowledge management processes.