Strategy

ASSA ABLOY's long-term sustainability strategy is to develop market opportunities, to enhance the management and results of all relevant sustainability issues, and to develop a complete and efficient management system for all issues until 2010.

The sustainability strategy is based on the risk and status assessment and designed to handle all risks, improve sustainability performance and create market opportunities. ASSA ABLOY has identified medium to high risks in some areas of activity. The illustration shows how we see the connection between risk and opportunity as well as net cost and net gain. In order to move from risk assessment at value chain level, we need to focus on our daily activities and practices. ASSA ABLOY is organized around business processes, such as management, sourcing, innovation, operations and human resources.These processes are the backbone of the sustainability approach, which integrates Code of Conduct, tools,programs, indicators and objectives directly into these processes.

The ASSA ABLOY sustainability strategy includes the following elements:

• Policy.
• Code of Conduct.
• Sustainability governance and organization.
• Minimum requirements for environment, health and safety as well as labor conditions. Requirements include technical provisions for environmental protection,health and safety and the requirement for ISO 14001 and specific requirements and tools for risk assessments.
• Business process specific tools, e.g. tools that have been developed and tailored to fit specific sustainability issues and specific business processes. See also illustration on next page.
• Indicators – both qualitative and quantitative – to mirror the performance – integrated into a sustainability reporting database.
• Sustainability program to handle risks and to create market opportunities. The program is also linked to the business processes, tools and indicators and is described in detail later in this report.
• Training.
• Communication, stakeholder engagement and reporting.

Costs and benefits of the sustainability strategy
Cost of risks has been estimated in some areas and we have also tried to estimate potential savings, such as cost savings through increased energy efficiency. However, we believe the real potential is in the market development, be it through a sustainable profile and market communication or through the development and launch of a sustainable portfolio of products.