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Jill Considine, Chairman and CEO Of Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation Named Six Sigma CEO of The Year At Global Six Sigma Summit

Las Vegas, NV, June 29, 2006: Jill Considine, Chairman & CEO of Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), received the top honor as Six Sigma CEO of the Year last night at the Global Six Sigma Summit & Industry Awards for her leadership in leveraging the methodologies that have achieved annualized savings of $17 million and customer satisfaction scores to world class levels of 90% for the corporation.

Held at the Venetian Hotel, awards were presented after extensive reviews by an independent, international panel of 14 leaders from business, industry and government to DTCC and eight other organizations including: Capital One Direct Banking; CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System; Cooper Standard Automotive; EMC Corporation; Lonmin plc; New York-Presbyterian Hospital; PACCAR Inc; TD Canada Trust. The honors recognize significant accomplishments by the recipients, who used Six Sigma disciplines in creative and innovative ways to achieve greater efficiencies, improve customer satisfaction, develop new products and services, and become more competitive.

Speaking at the Awards presentation, Six Sigma CEO Year of the Award winner Considine said: “Only five years after introducing Six Sigma methodologies and metrics to become even more efficient, reduce costs, grow revenue and achieve world-class customer satisfaction scores, we have achieved annualized benefit in savings and new revenue of $17 million with expectations of further growth. This kind of recognition reinforces at CEO level the importance of personal involvement and accountability for driving quality in an organization.”

“Equally important,” Considine said, “customer satisfaction survey scores reached world class levels of 90% and 89% for the last two years. DTCC also maintained ratings for integrity and commitment to quality by achieving satisfaction levels of 90% and 85% respectively.”

DTCC is the largest financial services post-trade infrastructure in the world. Owned by the financial services industry, its shareholders are its customers or participants who include broker/dealers, correspondent and clearing banks, mutual fund companies and investment banks. “You might think of us as the central nervous system supporting the functioning of capital markets in the U.S.”, Considine said. “Last year, we settled in excess of $1.4 quadrillion in securities transactions for the financial services industry.”

Considine said, “We believe Six Sigma has played a critical role in helping DTCC build a global brand image for clearance and settlement”. In 2001 as the CEO began the initial stages of introducing Six Sigma to DTCC, she took on the added role of Chief Quality Officer for the corporation to emphasize the importance of senior level support and direct involvement. “Leaders must be top-down advocates and role models, but success must come also from the bottom up as our 2,500 employees move from learning the methodology’s practices to building a Six Sigma culture,” according to Considine.

“We are dealing with accelerating trends, including changes in demographics, industry consolidation, technology innovation, and the influence of globalization.” Considine said. “And so are our customers! In many industries, the greatest threat is letting our guard down, not paying attention to the fundamentals of our businesses, losing sight of customer requirements, and their need to reduce risks and costs – internal and external. The threats facing us today are more complex because they require us to be exceptionally good at everything we do and continually strive for added value.”

“We created a 17-member Quality Council consisting of our senior management team, including general managers of all our businesses, to oversee the Six Sigma program by setting objectives in tandem with the corporate mission and goals, and approve quality initiatives for implementation. To help us embed the methodology and metrics deeply into the organization, we established a Quality Office staffed with professionals trained in Six Sigma. The group coordinates and administers the program, including training and project selection on a day-to-day basis and serve as our institutional advocate for quality and operational excellence.”

“In just the first two years,” Considine said, “our Six Sigma Black Belts oversaw cross-departmental quality projects that yielded cost savings of $5 million plus $2 million in new revenue. For example one project team focused on operations process improvements by reengineering the deposits process for the physical securities certificates that remained in circulation. With daily deposit volumes averaging 15,000 to 16,000, the team employed the Six Sigma Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) process to eliminate an outmoded step from DTCC’s traditional deposits process – cutting cycle time and costs. Another team slashed billing process cycle time in the Proxy Billing area by two-thirds – from 45 to 15 days.”

“As of 2006, 145 Six Sigma projects carried out with the teamwork of over 600 employees have been completed,” Considine said. “We incorporated 18 Six Sigma skills and proficiencies, including voice-of-the-customer and root-cause analysis, and performance measurement into our training curriculum, as well as criteria for employee promotions.”

“All DTCC employees now obtain a grounding in Six Sigma for thinking and working via a mandatory Quality Awareness Course, which began this year to provide training in the methodology’s basic concepts.”

“Six Sigma generated revenues and savings have provided a pool of resources that DTCC has reinvested in the corporation to self-fund new and enhanced service offerings and business initiatives. One result has been DTCC’s expansion into a new industry segment – the fast-growing market for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives.”

“Six Sigma helped us achieve our first five-year corporate mission,” DTCC’s CEO said.
“We know that if we’re going to meet rising demands, stay relevant and competitive in this changing financial services environment, then continuing to apply the Six Sigmamomentum throughout our organization is critical.

“On behalf of all our DTCC employees, I would like to thank WCBF for organizing and producing this important event that examines all best practices of the Six Sigma methodology and to Breakthrough Management Group for sponsoring the award”, Considine said.

Honors were awarded also last night to eight other U.S., Canadian and South African companies for adopting and applying Lean and Six Sigma processes to achieve significant improvements in automotive, banking, healthcare, information technology, manufacturing, and trucking industry applications.

Platinum Award for the Most Outstanding Organizational Achievement Through Six Sigma and the Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Healthcare, sponsored by CIGNA Corporation:
As well as receiving the award for Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Healthcare New York-Presbyterian Hospital received the Platinum Award for the overall most outstanding achievement through Six Sigma for using the quality methodologies to achieve major advances in patient safety, cost savings, innovation and efficiencies.

Best Achievement in Innovation Through Six Sigma:
CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System of Louisiana received the Best Achievement in Innovation Through Six Sigma for its approach in using the methodology to improve the System’s revenue cycle and achieve major cost savings and efficiencies in financial operations for its three hospitals and a regional business office.

Six Sigma Vice President of the Year, sponsored by Air Academy Associates:
James O. Pearson, Vice President of Customer Quality & Six Sigma at EMC Corp. received the Six Sigma Vice President of the Year honor for his leadership in methodically building EMC’s Six Sigma program and driving it deep into the company’s culture by extending its reach to over 26,000 employees.

Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Manufacturing:
Lonmin of South Africa, the world’s third largest producer of platinum, received the Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Manufacturing for its strong focus in using Six Sigma to reduce costs, improve revenue and maintain its competitive position.

Best Achievement in Financial Services
TD Bank Financial Group of Canada received the Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Financial Services for using the quality methodology to achieve significant improvement in the overall process of handling customer experiences at its TD Visa Call Centers in Montreal, Quebec, and London, Ontario.

Best Achievement in Service & Transactional Environments:
Capital One Direct Banking received the Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Service &
Transitional Environments for its integrated approach to mitigating risk, reducing costs and improving customer experience.

Best Achievement in Integrating Lean and Six Sigma Methodologies:
PACCAR, Inc., pioneer producer of light to heavy duty trucks, received the Best Achievement in Integrating Lean and Six Sigma methodologies for developing a fact-based decision-making process called High Impact Kaizen Event (HIKE) that combines the use of both disciplines with emphasis on speed and impact.

Best Achievement of Design for Six Sigma, sponsored by Moresteam.com:
Cooper Standard Automotive received the Best Achievement of Design for Six Sigma
for using the methodology to design, develop and produce a new water valve for Nissan’s new Pathfinder automobile instead of using a purchased component to meet exacting standards and to support production of the car in the U.S.

Established to identify outstanding organizational success through the application of Six Sigma methodologies, the Global Six Sigma Awards program received 65 entries from other organizations based in India, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the U.S. for the 2006 competition.

The accompanying Global Six Sigma Summit is the largest international gathering of CEOs and senior executives who apply Six Sigma processes. The three keynote speakers for the Summit were best-selling authors Malcolm Gladwell (“Blink” and “The Tipping Point”); Dr. Subir Chowdhury, Chairman & CEO of ASI Consulting Group, (“The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How Six Sigma is Transforming the Way We Work”); and Joseph Grenny, a founder of VitalSmarts and leading authority in organizational effectiveness.

The independent judging panel for The Global Six Sigma Awards includes:

• Dr. Subir Chowdhury, Best-Selling Six Sigma Author and Chairman & CEO of ASI Consulting Group
• Michael Teasdale, Director, Quality Leadership Process, Baxter Bioscience
• Leslie Behnke, Vice President of Business Excellence, CIGNA Corporation
• Keith Holliday, Director of Supply Chain Transformation and Six Sigma Champion, Global Operations, DuPont
• Fabrizio Majorana, Master Black Belt, Technology Production & Quality, Racing Department, Ferrari
• James Wasiloff, Reliability Specialist and Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, General Dynamics Land Systems
• Ronald Frank, Global Research Lean Leader, Master Black Belt, GE Global Research Center
• Venky Gopalaswamy, Executive Director, Process Excellence, Johnson & Johnson
• Tom McCarty, Executive Vice President, Strategic Consulting, Six Sigma Practice Leader, Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc.
• Percy Chan, Master Black Belt, LG Philips Displays International
• Ezra Eckhardt, Senior Vice President and CIO, Sterling Financial Corporation
• Colin Smart, Vice President, Business Excellence & Six Sigma, TRW Automotive
• Rear Admiral Walter Skinner, Commander, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division and Naval Air Systems Command AIRSpeed Command Deployment Champion, United States Navy
• Tomas Gonzalez, Vice President, Six Sigma, Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Valley Baptist Health System

About WCBF-Six Sigma Solutions:
With a total of 2,889 delegates to-date, WCBF-Six Sigma Solutions is the leading provider of extensively researched Six Sigma conferences, such as the Global Six Sigma Summit & Awards, covering healthcare, financial services, sales and marketing, design for six sigma, lean and six sigma, and service and transactional environments.

Note to editors:

For more in-depth data and/or interviews with management of any of the organizations above, please let one or both of the following contacts know so that you can get an immediate response in meeting your needs on a timely basis.

Bob Jones
Communications Research & Development
mktcom@optonline.net
(203) 374-4944

Flora Hamilton
Head of The Global Six Sigma Awards
flora.hamilton@tgssa.com
(800) 965-1574