20% - Assa Abloy

Tom Devine from
ASSA ABLOY Australia
and William Burns from
ASSA ABLOY Asia Pacific
were among the 31 participants
in the MMT class of
2008.
Working together at a distance
The ASSA ABLOY Management Training Program (MMT)
encourages sharing of best practice and information,
and supports networking within the Group. The main
objectives of the program are to increase knowledge of
ASSA ABLOY’s strategy, its products, markets, working tools
and so on, and to support collaboration within the Group
to make the most of its common strengths. Each program
includes four modules, each of which has a different focus.
“You come away from each module with an increased
understanding and a new perspective on ASSA ABLOY and
the key concepts behind our business,” says Tom Platner,
Vice President, Product Engineering at HID Group.
During the program, each participant has to choose a
real-life project they want to conduct. The groups have to
Employees
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check best practices, investigate threats and opportunities,
and finally come up with recommendations for the chosen
project. The challenge to Tom Platner’s team was to develop
a toolkit that could be used by member companies to
identify best practices in the area of shared services –
specifically IT, finance and accounting, and customer service.
“What has been a challenge, yet a benefit, of the experience
was to get our entire group – with participants from
the Americas, Europe and Africa – to work together remotely
in the periods between modules,” Platner says. “We set up
a web-based, collaborative workspace to help facilitate
communication and coordination. It was a significant
challenge to work as a consulting group and find time to
do it in addition to our everyday responsibilities.”