Free Custom «Mercedes-Benz» Essay Paper

Executive Summary

Throughout the product line of Mercedes-Benz, it has actually built a reputation of quality. This is because it is a globally recognized company with the top ten most identifiable brands globally. These brands have made the company to enjoy a prestigious stature. Mercedes-Benz Company markets its products to numerous people of varied levels ranging from upper middle class to upper class people around the globe in diverse countries. This has guaranteed the company a notable achievement. On average, the clients of the company are aged 40 and above but their products also appeal to younger markets, which have been a dependable and awfully lucrative niche. In terms of competition, the company competes with other magnificence automakers around the globe such as the BMW, Honda’s Acura, Nissan’s Infinity, and Toyota’s Lexus, among others.

In terms of carbon footprint, Mercedes-Benz Company uses and better handles carbon fiber in a more extensive manner. The company also manufactures full-sized sedans, hardtops, convertibles, coupes and sports sedans that sell globally, thus, earning the company global reputation. Mercedes’s numerous models have more belligerent body, better stability, superior performances, advanced handling, and the use of carbon fiber is more extensive than their regular Mercedes models. This is why most Mercedes cars are so expensive.

 

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Response 1: Operations

Mercedes-Benz is a multinational division of the German manufacturer Daimler AG, and the brand is used for automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The name first appeared in 1926 under Daimler-Benz but traces its origins to Daimler's 1901 Mercedes and to Karl Benz's 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen, widely regarded as the first automobile.

Mercedes-Benz traces its origins to Karl Benz's creation of the first petrol-powered car, the Benz Patent Motorwagen, made in January 1886 and Gottlieb Daimler and engineer Wilhelm Maybach's conversion of a stagecoach by the addition of a petrol engine later that year. The Mercedes automobile was first marketed in 1901. The first Mercedes-Benz brand name vehicles were produced in 1926, following the merger of Karl Benz's and Gottlieb Daimler's companies into the Daimler-Benz company. Mercedes-Benz has introduced many technological and safety innovations that later became common in other vehicles. It is one of the most well-known and established automotive brands in the world, and is also the world's oldest automotive brand still in existence today.

Response 2: Protect Mercedez Benz Brand (CSR)

To help reduce pollution and try to be clean and environmental-friendly, Mercedes Benz company has come up with a system that is fitted in their products such as the vehicles that they produce. This is system is called BlueTEC. It is a trademark name used by the company to describe its diesel engine exhaust treatment system. The system helps in the possibility of clean diesels that reduce emissions. Particulate matter (soot) is reduced 95 percent or more over standard diesels. There's also a substantial reduction in oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and sulfur. BlueTEC is diesel technology from Mercedes-Benz which permits ultra-efficient, low-emission and economical combustion of the fuel, offering the ideal conditions for low fuel consumption. All BlueTEC engines are designed to deliver high output, even in the economical low speed range. Clean diesels also generate more power and have increased fuel economy since the fuel is burned more efficiently and completely. In this way, Mercedes Benz company is trying its level best to be an environmentally responsible organization. It is therefore, helping put our environment.

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The primary greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, but nitrous oxide and methane are also part of the mix. However, widespread use of catalytic converters, exhaust gas recirculation, particulate filters and reformulated fuel by the Mercedes Benz company, have helped reduce these emissions by the products they produce.  The products that they produce are fitted with these converters to help reduce the emission of harmful products and reduce those that are harmful to harmless ones or less harmful. This has enabled the company’s supply and marketing more widespread and improving. This further, explains why Mercedes Benz company does not produce products within the native Germany only, but also to other countries such as Argentina, Austria, Brazil, and India, among others.

Mercedes Benz company has also come up with new and improved engines to be fixed in their products to ensure less or no emissions are produced by them. These engines will get into the market late this year and are expected to receive an EPA air pollution score of 6, which will even pass California’s stricter emissions standards, which so far have kept diesel vehicles from being sold there and in other so-called “green" states that have adopted California’s emissions laws: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The easiest way they have come up with to minimize carbon footprint is to choose a model with the best fuel economy possible. The company has, therefore, helped keep the ‘green’ areas green and clean.   

Question 1

The Mercedes-Benz company should assess its consumption of finite non-renewable resources, and develop relevant strategies to reduce the amount of carbon footprint; they should initiate a program where it recycles its non-renewable resources like rubber and metal materials.

The company ought to analyze its emission throughout the value chain; this program will enable the company select its relevant emission options (Hoffman, 2007, p. 10). The Mercedes-Benz company should identify and appoint individuals with relevant educational background on environmental subjects and those who exhibit a monumental environmental concern to formulate policies.

Considering that Mercedes-Benz manufacturing entails an extensive use of metal materials, the company should partner with garages and cottage industries in order to reduce the amount of metal material. The company should donate to charity rather than dump the materials, moreover, it should find ways of replacing the non-renewable resources with its biodegradable material substitutes.

Question 2

Mercedes-Benz Company being a car manufacturing industry, its carbon footprint is enormously complicated. Metals have to be extracted from ores, rubber tyres, paints and many other things will be needed; consequently, manufacturing process will involve transportation and use of energy.

Many organizations have succeeded in abating the carbon footprint; the Mercedes-Benz company should, therefore, adopt the measures and policies used by such organizations to reduce its carbon footprint. Manufacturing cars being an electric intensive process; the company should lower the use of electricity by initiating an automated system where all systems are automatically turned off when, not in use. Energy saving appliances such as compact fluorescent can be installed; hence a reduced amount of carbon footprint of the company (Cited in Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Environmental Audit Committee, 2008, p. 37).

The Mercedes-Benz company should partner with other car manufacturing industries, and make use of each other’s designs and technological know-how that is eco-friendly. For instance, the Toyota and Tesla car manufacturing industries are perceived to partner in the near future; these two companies will borrow techniques and knowledge in its marriage in order to reduce carbon emission. 

Under the supply chain footprint, the company should reinvent its car products by devising   new electric vehicles along with an electric grid that will store electrical energy, hence obliging this technology with non-renewable electricity. (Yeo, 2006).

The company should design cars that use environmentally viable conveyance fuels such as cellulosic ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells among other alternative fuels (Sim, 2009). It should also promote increased levels of recycling and remanufacturing of goods to recuperate the energy used through virgin material processing, hence avoiding energy losses of materials.

In most cases, companies tend to focus more on its quantification performance to the point of neglecting the urge to reduce carbon footprint. There is often a significant strain between the company’s goals and the aims of reducing carbon footprint in the company (Cited from, BCS the Chartered Institute for It, 2012). It is sometimes extremely difficult to point out where the right balance is, for example, abandoning some of the cheapest means of production to reduce carbon foot printing may mean adopting a more cost ineffective method of manufacturing, situations leave the company in an ethical dilemma. Despite these challenges, it is advisable for the Mercedes-Benz company to balance both its performance objectives alongside that of carbon footprint abatement.

Good governance not only within states but also within organizations themselves is key to ensuring that companies bear the responsibility in acting within the public interest and to a large extent serve social purposes.  Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is therefore in simple terms the way organizations manage their business processes to bring about a general positive impact on the society. This can only be possible however through a proper ethical framework and a culture of best management practices within the company and employees so that all their activities and products try to minimize the negative effects on the society to the minimum level possible. On the other hand, sustainability is one of the main elements why companies engage in CSR other than moral obligation, reputation and license to operate. “Sustainability emphasizes environmental and community stewardship” (Porter & Kramer, 2006). Consequently there is a strong relationship between governance, ethics, social responsibility and sustainability in an organization.

Ethics, Social Responsibility and Sustainability

Just like any other company, the Mercedes-Benz company has numerous issues regarding, ethics, social responsibility and sustainability (Kramer & Porter, 2006). According to Porter & Kramer (2006), notwithstanding how well a business is performing in terms of profits and how big its size is, many organizations are currently ranking organizations on the basis of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. The ethics development by organizations can help improve the society and protect the environment for example as pointed out by Karnani (2010)through production of healthier foods that don’t compromise the health of the consumer and production of green motors or energy/fuel- efficient vehicles which apart from helping conserve the energy reduce the rate of atmospheric pollution.

There is however some school of thought for the idea that social corporate responsibility is ineffective and irrelevant because much focus on it will discourage or discourage more efficient measures to improve social welfare within cases in which the public good and profits are at odds (Karnani, 2010). For instance the fact that some businesses are including some healthy components like salads, low fat content food and manufacturing of fuel-efficient cars to enhance social welfare has no social welfare in itself as the driving force behind this innovations but increased profitability.

Even though some companies may take advantage of the innovations to improve their profitability in the name of corporate responsibility, there are some who don’t seize such opportunities. In such occasions, the problem could be either the incompetence of the executives or due to the fact that they put their personal interests ahead of the long-term financial interests of the company.  Thus this calls for wise leadership, being in a position and having the courage to take risk for example in developing new products, a move that could jeopardize the company’s short-term financial performance but eventually improve its long-term prospects (Karnani, 2010).

Sustainability is also affected by the leadership skills within an organization because innovations and rapid adaptation to new technology are significant to any company’s sustainable practices. For instance, it calls for innovations to meet the current rapidly changing needs and also come up with products that have less negative effects on the environment. Social responsibility can be exercised in a company where there is poor leadership and also sustainability serves as a core factor in social responsibility (Nonka &Takeuchi, 2011).

Noteworthy, business is all about taking raw inputs and adding value to them by converting them into an item that will be of more worth to other individuals. In then follows that, the more value you create for your item, the more your customers will be willing to pay more to posses the item that you have come up with. Therefore, adding a lot of value to the items that one deals with makes them successful entrepreneurs. The question normally is;”how does one create value?” This is where the application of the “Value Chain Analysis comes in handy.”

There are numerous limitations derailing the smooth operation of Mercedes-Benz. One of the limitations is that, in the large organizations, the manager’s range of choice is often limited resulting from higher levels in an organization. Thus, in as much as the manger may wish to make changes, his hands are tied down. In the public sector, the politicians always seem to make basic and genuine choices that are strategic to make these managers be limited on how to make the best out of the strategies available. Thus, these mangers end up doing this instead of thinking about the strategic plans that will benefit them in the future. Chance and opportunity always limit the strategic choices that any manager of an organization can make. Thus, before a good manager settles on a specific strategic choice, it is important that they identify and choose the options that would benefit the company by maximizing their value outputs.

Conclusion

To sum up the whole discussion, there are various business practices that are unsustainable because of the dangers they bring to the environment and human life. Some examples include tourism, production of plastic bags and heavy industrial manufacturing. All businesses have the moral duty to revert their ways and enhance sustainability within their operations. This is because businesses must protect the interests of their customers because they are their major stakeholders. Additionally, if they continue destroying the environment, their ventures will only be short term because the conditions to carry out such activities will not be favorable and they may end up running short of raw materials to produce their goods. The easiest way they have come up with to minimize carbon footprint is to choose a model with the best fuel economy possible. The company has, therefore, helped keep the ‘green’ areas green and clean.