The scoring is complete and the 2009 Top 10 Best Places to Work for Six Sigma professionals is out.

Here is the Top 10 List in alphabetical order: I repeat, alphabetical order.

Cardinal Health Inc.

Computacenter AG & Co. oHG

Ecolab Inc.

McKesson Corp.

Merck & Co., Inc.

Pfizer Inc.

Piramal Healthcare Ltd.

Starwood Hotels, North America Operation

Vought Aircraft Industries Inc.

Xerox Corp.

The numbered order of this list will be revealed at an Awards ceremony and breakfast, February 3, 2010 during the iSixSigma Live! Summit and Awards in Miami. Congratulations to these companies as well as all those that participated.

There is still plenty of time to submit projects for consideration in other iSixSigma Live! Award categories:

* Best Lean Six Sigma Start-up or Re-energized program

* Largest Breakthrough Improvement Projects

* Six Sigma Hall of Fame

Next month (yes, I’m giving you early notice so you can put this in your calendar) TRIZ expert, Ellen Domb, will once again be on air with Steve Wilson of Quality Conversations, discussing practical applications of TRIZ.

Tuesday, Nov. 3rd, 11 AM Pacific. Be there.

Ellen is also speaking at the iSixSigma Live Summit & Awards in Miami next year. If you are looking for a reason to attend, Ellen’s TRIZ workshop would be reason enough - it’s fantastic.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept 30), Ellen Domb, founder of the TRIZ Journal, will be on Steve Wilson’s show Quality Conversations, hosted by blogtalkradio.

Steve has interviewed a plethora of quality professionals in the past. Guest appearances include Tom Kubiak, Forrest Breyfogle, Mark Graban, Jessica Harper, as well as yours truly.

Ellen and Steve will be talking about Six Sigma Trees. Not the kind that grow in your backyard, but rather the kind that Ellen so expertly sows into everyday business improvement thought processes...TRIZ sure has a way of growing on you. I’ve attended Ellen’s TRIZ workshops several times and always enjoy her style, method, and expertise in teaching the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.

Below is the promo introducing the show. Check it out tomorrow 8:30 Central.

"Standard quality improvement methodologies such as DMAIC and PDSA have always incorporated brainstorming as a key method for finding creative solutions to problems. Brainstorming is designed to liberate a team’s thinking from past patterns and and uncover ideas that people might have unconsciously suppressed. When it works its great. But what happens when it does not work...if the solution lies outside the experience of the team? Ellen Domb, long time expert on the subject of TRIZ and founder of the TRIZ Journal joins us today to talk about the need for the use of TRIZ in Six Sigma."

The archive of my Quality Conversation with Steve Wilson this morning. Thanks Steve for having me on your show.

On Monday, Sept 14, I'll be speaking with Steve Wilson on his show Quality Conversations, hosted by blogtalkradio. Steve has interviewed many quality professionals in the past, including Tom Kubiak, Forrest Breyfogle, Mark Graban and our very own iSixSigma editor-in-chief, Jessica Harper. I am happy to join the ranks of Steve's guest list.

We're going to be talking Six Sigma and the Economy... discussing the findings of a recent iSixSigma Magazine research report published in July this year. We'll be talking about serious subjects such as budget cuts, workloads, and job losses as well as more positive aspects the down economy is bringing out in companies practicing Six Sigma.

The conversation is live and open to callers, so if you want to call in and heckle me...go ahead, make my day.

iSixSigma is pleased to announce the opening of award nominations for the iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards in Miami in February 2010. Here’s what we are looking for:

* iSixSigma’s Six Sigma Hall of Fame: iSixSigma will recognize individuals who have significantly impacted corporate growth and shareholder value through the use of Lean Six Sigma by inducting them into the Six Sigma Hall of Fame. Last year Bill Smith was the first inductee into the Six Sigma Hall of Fame.

* Largest-Breakthrough Improvement Projects: In keeping with the conference theme of "Practices That Make Profits," iSixSigma will recognize Lean Six Sigma projects with the largest "breakthrough" results in four categories – supply chain, transactional, manufacturing and customer service.

* Most Successful Lean Six Sigma Start-up or Re-energized Lean Six Sigma Program: This award recognizes the most successful start-up or the most invigorating re-energized deployment.

* iSixSigma MVP Awards: iSixSigma’s MVP awards recognize individuals that have made outstanding voluntary contributions to the Six Sigma community through the iSixSigma Discussion Forum, Blogosphere and Twitter. (Finalists and winners for the MVP awards will be determined by iSixSigma’s editorial team.)

The deadline for submitting projects and nominations is Nov. 30. For more information on award categories and entry requirements, visit: http://live.isixsigma.com/awards/default.html

Nominations are open for iSixSigma’s second annual Best Places to Work List. If you are working for a top notch company using Lean Six Sigma, go ahead and nominate it to be included in our list of Best Places to Work.

Last year 10 companies made the list. McKesson took home the #1 spot, followed by Vought Aircraft Industries and Textron.

Read all about what makes McKesson the Best Place to Work in the latest article on iSixSigma.com. (This article was previously published only in iSixSigma Magazine).

If your company treats its Six Sigma employees right, let us know by nominating it for this year’s list.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=o3tIVeS1bYHbYiosX5BGNg_3d_3d

The deadline to submit a speaking proposal for the second annual iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards has been extended one week. If you were on the fence about submitting an idea, now’s the time to take action.

More than 200 of the world’s top business leaders and operational experts will gather, Feb. 1-4, 2010, in Miami, Fla., USA at The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach. The theme is "Practices That Make Profits.” Don’t miss this chance to share your related inspirational stories, concrete examples and actionable strategies.

Extended deadline for proposals: Friday, Aug. 7, 2009. Visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=IUanv83qkQ3wpNlWCZF_2faQ_3d_3d to learn more.

iSixSigma.com is back online!

It has taken more than a month to set straight what clever and malicious hackers did. Our e-media team, along with a high-profile security consultant and a band of programmers, diligently worked to resolve the multitude of problems injected into our websites. All the time and effort moving the sites to new servers, repairing and cleaning thousands of lines of code and fully testing the sites has paid off. Our websites are now safe and reliable.

During the time the website was down, we talked to a lot of site users. Some were disappointed, some were sympathetic, but nearly everyone asked the question: Can you tell us more about what happened and explain what is taking you so long to get back online?

What was the root cause of the problem? Our firewall protection was not as good as we had understood it to be. That’s why we have moved our websites to new servers. Those servers are behind multiple firewalls and are monitored in a much more aggressive way than our old one. Moving a complex of interconnected websites that were designed and built during an eight-year period, often using hard coding, unfortunately takes more than a few days.

What did we find during our analysis of the hack? While every hack is seen as bad by those who are hacked, it seems our attacker was especially nasty. Our experienced security consultants indicated that this was one of the worst attacks they have seen. Fortunately the hacker had no access to e-commerce transactions, which are handled by third party specialists. Also, while it is possible that the hacker collected email addresses, evidence suggests that the primary motivation was to install malware on end-users' personal computers. This code had to be painstakingly discovered and removed.

What consideration did we provide customers? Our initial decision was to keep the sites up during the first days as our technical people began the battle with the hackers. When it became apparent that the problems were greater than originally assumed, we shut down the sites before our problems could spread to those who visited us. We decided to work with deliberation to make sure the repairs to the site were complete and that sufficient safeguards were installed to prevent this kind of hack from happening again.

I apologize for the inconveniences this has caused those who use our sites. While no one can guarantee an online site free of outside influences, we can and do commit ourselves to being among the best sites on the web. Following that course, we will continue to make more improvements in functionality as we move ahead with an iSixSigma site redesign project begun in May. Our objective remains to provide the best Lean Six Sigma information possible. Obviously we want everyone who visited our sites during the last eight-plus years to feel that we are not only back, but better than ever.

Again and again, culture change comes up as one of the most important aspects of a successful Six Sigma deployment and reaching maturity. Yet effecting culture change is one of the most difficult parts to master. Almost 50 percent of respondents to a recent iSixSigma survey said their company was far from achieving its desired culture change.

Bringing the topic to the stage at the Energy Forum for Process Excellence is Stephen P. Tomlinson, vice president, operations support, for Cameron. The company provides flow equipment products, systems and services to worldwide oil, gas and process industries through its 11 operating divisions.

With more than 300 Black Belts and 750 Green Belts, Cameron is moving from a culture of anecdotally based problem solving and improvement to one of a “classic Six Sigma.” The company’s goal is to take Six Sigma to every employee, instilling process improvement at all levels. Takeaways of the presentation:

• Settling on overarching themes
• Considering the new role of Black Belts and Master Black Belts
• The importance of metrics
• Deciding on a rollout strategy

Tomlinson’s insight into how 16,000-employee Cameron is energizing improvement in its more than 250 locations through Lean Six Sigma promises to be an informative, engaging presentation.