The development of BLUETEC required engineers at Mercedes-Benz Cars to not only enter into technologically uncharted territory, but also to abandon standard procedures for assigning development tasks. “When we took BLUETEC out of research and advanced development, we had a concept in place, but we also had knowledge of the very many problems we faced in terms of the details,” recalls Bernd Lindemann. The conventional procedure here would have been to have the responsible specialist development department work on each issue separately. In such a situation, each department focuses on those areas requiring its attention, in terms of its function and goals — and it does so independently of all the others.

One engine developer might, for example, search for solutions that will further reduce raw emissions produced during combustion, while another will focus on diesel fuel consumption and seek to make the engine as economical as possible. Meanwhile, the exhaust treatment department will be optimizing its systems. The problem here is that although each department may make significant progress in its area, the laboratory advances are nullified when all measures actually begin to interact in the engine.

Lindemann offers an example of how conflicting goals can impact the engine development process, even within a single department. As he points out, a developer of an NOx storage catalytic converter and a colleague from the same department who is responsible for the particulate filter want different things from an engine developer. “One needs the highest possible exhaust gas temperature, while the other prefers the lowest possible temperature,” Lindemann explains. “In other words, one of them wants the engine developer to ensure as much exhaust gas recirculation as possible, while the other wants the lowest level of recirculation.”

Given such difficulties, the advanced development team quickly realized that it needed to assemble a cross-departmental project group that would bring together experts from all key areas. Lindemann, who became the head of this new BLUETEC project team, says that “cooperation was the key to the success of BLUETEC — and the most important aspect here was that we successfully created an atmosphere where organizational borders became blurred and everyone focused on how their work might best accommodate their colleagues. Basically, it came down to giving others the breathing room they needed for their requirements and approaches.”

This cooperative atmosphere didn’t just materialize by itself; its creation required a lot of communication. “Whenever anybody approached a colleague with demands that made that person’s work more difficult, they had to explain exactly why their particular need was so important to their work,” Lindemann explains, adding that “the great thing about the project was how quickly we all internalized that we had a common goal, which could only be achieved by working together.”