For Knorr-Bremse AG, 2025 is a special year, during which the company will be celebrating its 120th anniversary. Since it was first founded in Berlin on January 19, 1905, the company has pursued a clearly defined mission: to make travel by road and rail safe, efficient, sustainable and eco-friendly – everywhere, every day.
Now based in Munich, the Knorr-Bremse Group is the global market leader in braking systems and a leading supplier of other systems for rail and commercial vehicles. This makes Knorr-Bremse one of the most successful industrial companies in Germany. More than 32,000 employees working at more than 100 locations in 30 different countries are developing and producing innovative solutions for the latest challenges in a new world of mobility.
Dr. Reinhard Ploss, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Knorr-Bremse AG: “Knorr-Bremse’s ascent is characterized by a powerfully entrepreneurial mindset and visionary innovation. Thanks to the ideas of the company’s original founder, Georg Knorr, millions of people around the world now travel safely by road and rail every day. Starting in the mid-1980s, Heinz Hermann Thiele spent almost four decades showing us all what could be achieved with courage and determination as he built up the company into a major global player. Now the Knorr-Bremse team is carrying this legacy forward with passion and commitment, while using this strong foundation to constantly reinvent itself. The company’s future success is assured by its engineering expertise, dedication to the highest quality standards, and farsighted strategic thinking. On behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I congratulate Knorr-Bremse employees around the world on this remarkable success story, and I look forward to supporting the company’s future development.”
Marc Llistosella, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Knorr-Bremse AG: “After 120 proud years, Knorr-Bremse is in great shape. Over many decades, with great passion and an unflagging willingness to change and evolve, the Knorr-Bremse team has built an internationally successful company. For me personally, leading this company at this time is an enormous privilege. The whole Executive Board team is proud of the achievements and commitment of our workforce. Our customers appreciate the reliability and superior quality of our products, our perfect service, and our innovative developments and solutions for tomorrow’s mobility and transportation technologies. We see this clearly reflected in the high levels of loyalty and many years of close collaboration this company has enjoyed and continues to enjoy with our customers and business partners – for which I would like to express my sincere thanks on behalf of all my colleagues.”
Twofold cause for celebration: 120 Years of Knorr-Bremse, 20 Years of Knorr-Bremse Global Care
Encapsulated in the motto “One World – One KB”, Knorr-Bremse is celebrating 120 years of business success. Anniversary celebrations will focus on the global team of employees, whose commitment, ideas and hard work have made this exceptional success possible. The company will celebrate this remarkable team achievement by organizing in-house festivities on Knorr-Bremse sites around the world throughout the summer of 2025. During the year, the company will also invite employees to take a closer look at the company’s history, focus even more intensively on tackling future developments and challenges, and take part in an in-house sustainability competition launched especially for the anniversary year.
Just how impactful employee commitment can be is clearly reflected by Knorr-Bremse’s parallel anniversary: In 2005, on the initiative of Heinz Hermann Thiele and his daughter Julia Thiele-Schürhoff, employees set up the non-profit organization Knorr-Bremse Global Care, now active all around the world. For the last 20 years, the association has focused on supporting people who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, helping them to become independent. In terms of projects, Knorr-Bremse Global Care prioritizes education and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), aligning its efforts with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The association’s work has already reached over one million people.
Julia Thiele-Schürhoff, Chair of the association’s Executive Board: “I am enormously grateful for the commitment shown by Knorr-Bremse employees since the association was first founded, in helping so many people to build autonomous, financially independent lives for themselves and their families. As a society, we will only be able to find lasting solutions to global challenges such as the climate crisis, social inequality and migration if we take collective responsibility for the consequences of existing imbalances and work to find innovative solutions to the systemic issues involved.”
The Knorr-Bremse Group supports the association’s activities by making regular donations and contributing employees’ expertise as part of its corporate social responsibility.
How Knorr-Bremse rose to become the global market leader in braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles
Georg Knorr laid the foundations of the company’s success when he established Knorr-Bremse GmbH in Berlin on January 19, 1905. As a young engineer, he succeeded in revolutionizing rail transportation with his visionary ideas and meticulous development work. A few years later, the company also entered the commercial vehicle market. Safety was always a key consideration when developing braking solutions and other safety-critical components and subsystems: The company’s major breakthrough came after pneumatic brakes developed by Knorr reduced the number of accidents and made vehicles more reliable. To this day, these criteria form the basis of the company’s ongoing success, which has been further enhanced by the continuous development and optimization of the company’s products in response to changing traffic volumes, increasingly heavy loads and ever more stringent regulatory standards.
In full awareness of these strengths, entrepreneur Heinz Hermann Thiele took the reins of the company following a management buyout in 1985 and spent decades in a constant quest for innovation, excellence, and market leadership. After merging the company with Süddeutsche Bremsen AG to form Knorr-Bremse AG, he focused on the core business activities, on the two divisions (Rail Vehicle Systems and Commercial Vehicle Systems) and on building an international presence. Thus Knorr-Bremse rose to become the world’s leading manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles. The company’s IPO in 2018 provided Knorr-Bremse with the necessary commercial and financial flexibility to remain successful in the future. Today, Knorr-Bremse holds around 12,000 patents, and in fiscal 2023, generated annual revenues of some EUR 7.9 billion.
The future is digital: Building an edge with innovative solutions
The world’s transportation markets are evolving at breakneck speed – and Knorr-Bremse is playing a major role in this rapid progress by actualizing the enormous potential of digitalization to produce real-world solutions. By developing the Digital Automatic Coupler (DAC), for example, Knorr-Bremse is enabling advanced automation and smart digital services in the rail freight sector. And in the commercial vehicle sector, the company is using Cojali’s Jaltest Diagnostics suite – which includes fully integrated Knorr-Bremse Diagnostics tools – to boost efficiency in vehicle workshops. As well as stationary in-workshop diagnostics, Knorr-Bremse is working with Cojali to expand its range of remote diagnostics (condition-based monitoring) and predictive maintenance solutions.
SOURCE: Knorr-Bremse
