Uponor boosts project management skills across Europe

Uponor uses the Stage-Gate® process for enhanced structure and transparency, especially in new product development projects. They decided to partner with Kumura for the launch of the model in four European locations in Sweden, Spain, Germany, and Finland.

Project management skills across Europe

Uponor provides solutions for infrastructure, energy management, heating, plumbing and air conditioning that are as individual as the buildings themselves. Uponor has offices and factories all over the world.

In 2018, Uponor opted for a new Stage-Gate model for enhanced structure and transparency, especially in new product development (NPD) projects. After acquainting themselves with the new Stage-Gate model in the US, Uponor decided to find a local partner for the launch in four European locations in Sweden, Spain, Germany and Finland and ended up partnering with Kumura.

Kumura’s trainers Virpi Elers, Teppo Nurminen, Mika Purola and Vesa Ilama eagerly accepted the challenge. No sooner said than done, training in all four locations was scheduled and the trainers rolled up their sleeves.

”It was quite an effort for Kumura, as well as ourselves at Uponor, to take in the Stage-Gate model and put together the training concept and materials on such short notice. Still, it worked fantastically well,” says Mattias Carlsson, Project Manager located in Uponor Sweden.

”It was quite an effort for Kumura, as well as ourselves at Uponor. Still, it worked fantastically well.”

“We have obviously seen numerous project management models and processes, and the quality of the processes vary a great deal among the companies. Our job was fortunately made easier by the very structured and well-articulated project processes of Uponor. An essential part of the success was also the rapid and smooth cooperation with Mattias and the key people in various countries”, states Teppo Nurminen.

Bring it on: Finland-Sweden-Germany-Spain

In the first launch, all four pieces of training were held during the same week. ”The benefit of training in several locations almost simultaneously is, naturally, the time effectiveness. On the other hand, you can’t fix any possible bugs between training sessions as you would in a subsequent rollout, and the trainers don’t get to utilize ideas and questions from previous training sessions. So there’s upsides and downsides, of course,” Mr. Carlsson says.

”We did get the message out to a broad audience quite effectively. We have several teams working in product development and project management in Europe and the US and we exchange and integrate knowledge quite actively. We also had people from different functions, such as product marketing, procurement and quality management, as well as production joining the training sessions. And it’s great that we all could take in the same information, the same model and system over such a short period.”

Online and face to face

Later, in spring 2019, Uponor and Kumura worked together to develop a more generic PM training concept. ”In our European offices and factories, not everyone has previous project management training. So we wanted to give them a toolbox for working in projects, a common ground to stand on,” Mr. Carlsson explains.

For project team members, training sessions were held online with some pre-tasks in Kumura’s virtual learning platform Howspace, followed by a 4-hour session on Skype. For the project manager training, Nurminen, Elers and Purola flew in for classroom sessions in the same four locations as before. ”Overall, the participants have been very content with the training – I haven’t heard any negative feedback,” says Mr. Carlsson. ”I think it was essential that the training content was tweaked to match Uponor’s processes, so it really felt like it was tailored to our needs.”

”I think it was essential that the training content was tweaked to match Uponor’s processes, so it really felt like it was tailored to our needs.”

Continuous development

In the training feedback collected by Kumura, the overall score for the training in 2019 was 4.6 out of 5, which indeed indicates that participants were happy – and actually, hungry for more: regular PM training, leadership training and training for upper management as well have been suggested by the participants. So, what’s next?

”We are considering leadership training in the near future as a next step, to supplement the project management training held so far,” Mr. Carlsson reveals. ”Also, we could offer the Skype introductory sessions continuously for people joining the project teams.”

“To me, Uponor is at the same time at a very high maturity level and still always eager to continuously enhance and renew their processes,” Kumura’s Mr. Nurminen concludes.