And at the organisational level ...

Citation

(2008), "And at the organisational level ...", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 57 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2008.07957bab.005

And at the organisational level ...

The Mercedes Car Group (part of Daimler-Chrysler) is the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury vehicles and recently announced that it has reduced costs by 7.1 billion euros ($10 billion) in the last three years as part of a program to boost productivity and profitability.

The CORE program, implemented by former Mercedes head Eckhard Cordes in 2005, was designed to improve productivity and reduce the complexity as well as the number of parts that were involved in building Mercedes-Benz vehicles. The aim now, according to Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche, is to raise profit as a percentage of sales to “at least” 10 percent by 2010.

Under the CORE program, Mercedes aims to achieve profit as a percentage of sales of at least 7 percent this year. Chief Operating Officer, Rainer Schmueckle suggests there is “no reason” why the second-half return on sales should be worse than the 8.1 percent achieved in the first half of the year.

Mercedes-Benz lost 9,700 assembly-line jobs through the program - 1,200 more than originally planned and productivity in the last two years has increased by 20 percent. Schmueckle said that the carmaker implemented 43,000 individual measures during the last two years to reduce costs.

The carmaker continues to search for ways to reduce spending, including talking with competing automakers about working on joint projects as a way to reduce costs.