Mercedes-Benz is turning to automation and circularity in its procurement strategy, driving cost savings and sustainability across operations
Mercedes-Benz is a German automotive brand, dedicated to pioneering the future of driving excellence.
As a global company, it requires efficiency and productivity across the board.
To ensure that it maintains a strong workflow with smart business decisions, Mercedes-Benz is turning to automation, sustainability and ‘Game Theory’ to enhance its procurement strategy.
Game Theory to optimise procurement
The Mercedes-Benz procurement team has a focus on ‘Game Theory’ – a strategic application of interactive decision-making models.
It designs negotiations to get the best value from suppliers, creating a competitive environment where they are encouraged to offer the best incentives.
Through this, companies can work with suppliers to develop the best prices, increase performance and identify any potential risk factors.
Christian Netenjakob, Project Coordinator at Mercedes-Benz, says: “We work on selected strategically-important sourcing scopes. We optimise the sourcing process in the interest of ensuring that Mercedes-Benz ultimately chooses the best supplier.
“Game theory is a scientific methodology that helps us analyse strategic interactions between participants in a market. Based on analyses and through the application of game theory methodologies, we define rules that are later applied to real negotiations and order allocations.
“These rules are binding for both Mercedes-Benz and the participating suppliers. This allows us to ensure fair competition and a transparent sourcing process.”
Using this theory, Christian’s team advises the purchasing specialists on the right route to follow, particularly as the theory often leads to solid purchasing results.
Collaboration and conversation is key to the successful application of game theory within Mercedes-Benz’s procurement strategy.
Efficiency with automation
To ensure operational excellence, digitalisation has become crucial at Mercedes-Benz.
To enhance production efficiency and provide support to business partners, the Operational Excellence team is applying automation to its processes.
Until recently, Mercedes-Benz had a fragmented digital infrastructure, but it has taken steps to consolidate its platforms and implement SAP solutions to increase efficiency.
“We had quite a differentiated system landscape overall, with many, many different applications,” explains CIO Katrin Lehmann. “Now, we need to consolidate the data, put it on platforms, move to the cloud, ensure that this data is available because AI only works as well as the data foundation you have.”
“We signed an SAP RISE deal to ensure that the most important applications can go to the cloud, as we can also consume AI and Joule and all the cool innovation stuff that we need for our colleagues to be even more efficient and productive.”
The company is now using predictive forecasting to create future strategies based off automation and past information. By implementing AI and digital tools, Mercedes-Benz has real-time data analysis built into its solutions.
As a result, procurement is more efficient and accurate, able to avoid risk thanks to the wider availability of information.
Embedding circularity
At Mercedes-Benz, the aim is to promote economic growth alongside sustainability. The company has six sustainability focus areas: environment & climate, resources & circularity, human rights, traffic safety, digital trust and people.
It also works actively to reduce the amount of primary materials used in production by increasing the use of secondary materials. Such circularity avoids waste and reduces CO₂ emissions.
In 2022, 32,4000 tonnes of used parts and materials were recycled at Mercedes-Benz in Germany. At the Kuppenheim mechanical-hydrometallurgical recycling plant, which began operations in 2024, there was a 96% recovery rate of materials.
Sustainability is certainly driving this circular strategy, but it also brings economic and business benefits to the company – reducing production costs, mitigating supply chain risks and encouraging innovation.
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