Knorr-Bremse celebrates 120 years of forward thinking
For Knorr-Bremse AG, 2025 is a special year, during which the company is 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.
The company is celebrating this remarkable team achievement by organising in-house festivities on Knorr-Bremse sites around the world throughout the summer.
20 Years of Knorr-Bremse Global Care also being celebrated
Knorr-Bremse is also celebrating a parallel anniversary. In 2005, on the initiative of Heinz Hermann Thiele and his daughter Julia Thiele-Schürhoff, employees set up the non-profit organisation 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 prioritises 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.
The Knorr-Bremse Group supports the association’s activities by making regular donations and contributing employees’ expertise as part of its corporate social responsibility.
A global leader in rail and commercial vehicles braking systems
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 revolutionising 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 optimisation 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 actualising the enormous potential of digitalisation to produce real-world solutions.
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.