Garry Williams grew up in Robbins, North Carolina in a family that struggled financially. This difficult childhood instilled in Garry the motivation to strive for a higher standard of living for himself and his family. He was determined to obtain a college degree even though it meant he must shoulder the responsibility for funding his education and all related expenses. Garry met the challenge head-on and graduated from North Carolina State University in 1974 with a degree in Computer Science. Upon graduation he accepted a position with Milliken & Company in Spartanburg, SC, where he remained for his entire 38-year career. Milliken & Company is a privately owned international manufacturing company that was comprised of some 60-plus entities worldwide with a product base of textile fabrics, carpeting, composite fabrics, automotive fabrics, chemical manufacturing, and packaging products.From the very beginning, Garry stood out as someone special at Milliken and progressed through several levels of management within the Information Technology functional area. These included Systems Development, Functional Support, Technical Support, and Strategic Innovation. Garry retired as Director of Information Technology in late 2011. Garry utilized his education and knowledge at the highest professional level possible for Milliken & Company. He loved his work and was very dedicated to keeping Milliken on the cutting edge of technology. Producing positive outcomes for the Company was his highest professional goal. To him, failure was never an option. If anyone ever “pushed the envelope,” it was Garry Williams.He enjoyed a close working relationship with senior leadership including Mr. Roger Milliken, the company owner. He always respected the opinions of Mr. Milliken and in turn, Mr. Milliken respected Garry for his personal character, for his ability to assume significant leadership responsibilities, and for his ability to produce positive results for the company. This relationship continued for around 30 years prior to Mr. Milliken's passing in 2010.Garry’s innate ability to lead and grow team members was extraordinary. This characteristic, paired with determination and a passion for excellence, was evidenced by his many outstanding accomplishments.As digital computing came to the forefront in the 1970s, Milliken & Company wed ink-jet technology, digital designs and a computer controlled dye range to create a continuous manufacturing process for printing standard and custom designs on tufted carpet. The resulting digital carpet printer – Millitron® – enabled the company to revolutionize the carpet printing process and to expand in new markets. The technology was implemented in the United States as well as Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Germany, and England. Garry and his team were instrumental in the efforts to design, build, and install the software necessary to integrate data generated for and by the Millitron® process, with existing systems including planning, manufacturing, customer service and financial applications This Millitron process is still active today. In 1984, Garry was given the challenge to install and implement VAX (Digital Equipment Corporation) computers at each Milliken manufacturing location. Prior to this project, all plants operated independently with little to no linkage to headquarters other than by use of dial-up connections. To realize the full potential of these new powerful computers, Garry launched a plan for an intercompany network that would enable the VAX computers to communicate with the corporate headquarters mainframe computer and core systems and also allow corporate IT to log into each VAX and make necessary updates. In 1989, Milliken & Company was awarded the coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. To receive this award, an organization must have a system that insures continuous improvement in overall performance in delivering products and services and also must provide an approach for satisfying and responding to customers. Garry led and supported efforts to implement companywide systems and controls addressing these requirements. Product Quality and Customer Service performance measures were programmed for in-place continual monitoring. Most companies that were awarded this recognition did so for only a portion of their company, such as a division or sub-business. Because of the capability of Milliken’s software to provide continual measurements, Milliken’s application for this award covered the entire global corporation.In 1991, the Director of Information Services identified as one of his first priorities the creation of a simpler organization centered on applications development, the technical infrastructure to support those applications and the functional support for the utilization of those applications. Having worked with Garry closely on the VAX/Network project, the Director had confidence in asking Garry to lead the main development team in Spartanburg. This team of over 100 was charged with designing the applications, building the program code, and supporting all program code and upgrades.In 1995, Milliken’s Live Oak carpet manufacturing plant located in LaGrange, Georgia burned to the ground. This facility at 580,000 square feet was reportedly one of the largest dollar losses in Georgia history, and its loss was a very historical event for both the Company and for Information Services. While the plant was still burning, Mr. Milliken promised to rebuild it on the same site in six months. That same day, Garry relocated key members of his team to LaGrange. Fortunately, the plant VAX was recovered from the office of the burning building and was relocated to another plant in LaGrange with all records intact. The top priority that first week was to find a location to utilize while the demolition and rebuild were occurring. It was truly remarkable what Garry and his team accomplished in just six days. The plant caught fire on Monday, a contract was signed on Wednesday for an available warehouse location, and Garry’s team wired the office and had replacement computers at each desk by Saturday. As Mr. Milliken toured the office on Sunday, the first roll of carpet was shipped and billed using the temporary facility.The Live Oak location was the company’s main carpet facility with some capability at the Hillside plant also in LaGrange. Other manufacturing sites were in England and Japan. Milliken Management wanted to ensure that the fire would have minimal impact on customer order fulfillment and manufacturing associates who may be displaced by the fire. In order to accomplish this production activity must continue in the most effective manner. Live Oak manufacturing associates were flown to England and supplemented their English counterparts; changing the plant hours from ten hours per day, five days a week to twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week. Europe had its own Information Services department with a subset in Germany. Although all of the software applications accomplished the same results, they were not generated in the same format. Garry quickly realized the need to step back and re-evaluate the global application infrastructure. It was his idea that, if the company was to operate as a global entity versus independent international sites, Milliken would need to replace all of the in-house developed applications with off-the-shelf commercial applications. The next six months focused on the physical rebuilding of Live Oak and all of the computer related activities involved as well as supporting the international manufacturing. It was during this time that Garry researched bar-coding and RFID capability thus enabling Milliken to become one of the first companies in the country to implement this technology. This technology was implemented at all of Milliken’s manufacturing locations. True to Mr. Milliken’s vow, the first roll of carpet was manufactured at the newly constructed facility in six months and the plant was fully operational in nine months.Garry recognized early-on that Milliken’s software, which had been programmed using a two digit year field, would not function properly when the year rolled over from 1999 to 2000 (Y2K). In 1995, while concentrating on LaGrange, he had the foresight to create a twenty person team to evaluate and update all of the in-house developed software to accommodate four digit years. He concluded that this would be the safest way to handle Y2K and not try to rush in with a major ERP initiative. Due to this early start and the global nature of this team, Milliken moved into year 2000 virtually seamlessly.Throughout the 1995 to 2000 timeframe, Garry and the Director of Information Services continued efforts toward global operations with senior leadership. This regarded both organization and systems, as made clear while running the carpet business as one global business. In 2001, senior leadership finally agreed that all of the Information Services world-wide needed to be under U.S. leadership. Garry was given the task of integrating all of the various software applications from England, Germany, Japan and the United States. While doing this, it became even more apparent to Garry that a new direction was critically needed for Milliken’s software applications. He continued to push for an ERP evaluation.By 2005, Milliken’s chemical division was experiencing many of the global issues that Garry dealt with during global carpet manufacturing. The president of that division was asking why he needed to go to different sources to access the same information for his locations in Europe and the United States. The more Garry discussed this with him, the more he supported a global replacement for their system infrastructure. With the chemical division president on board, Information Services and the Chemical Division decided to create a joint team to evaluate ERP software that could function throughout the entire company. Realizing how important this evaluation would become and the fact that he had always heard that such projects needed the best and brightest, the Director of Information Services asked Garry if he would give up his leadership of Application Development and hand pick a team to work with the Chemical Division. This would not be a quick solution as the scope of the project was to cover every aspect of Milliken’s diverse operations. Garry accepted the challenge and over the next year, along with business associates from all divisions, evaluated many ERP alternatives. All of the candidates had to be able to meet the requirements of: order fulfillment, customer relationship management, finance, procurement, inventory tracking and control, supply chain management, business intelligence, and must also accommodate for the manufacture of hazardous materials for the Chemical Division. After extensive research, the team recommended SAP (Systems Applications and Products) as the best solution for Milliken. Garry’s team prepared the justification for the implementation of SAP throughout Milliken’s global reach. They also developed an implementation plan that would span four years and implement the software in every division within four years. With the Chemical Division leading the way, senior leadership approved the project in 2008. They expanded it to include human resources (Human Capital Management) in 2009.Garry led many teams to successfully implement numerous other projects, some of which were: • Strategic Innovation – a team that thought outside the box. Identifying bleeding edge technology for use within Milliken.• Code generators – identified software that could be used to generate COBOL code from an algorithm. This reduced the amount of code required by Milliken Information Technology systems programmers.• Dye Scheduling system – used to automate the planning and availability of dyes and chemicals to ensure timely customer order fulfillment.• Web Order Entry – enabling customers to enter orders online, a very innovative accomplishment at the time • User Programming and Data Mining ToolsGarry knew the importance of relationships with key customers and suppliers. This was originally fueled by his personal relationship with Jim Goodnight of SAS whom Garry met at North Carolina State University. Under Garry’s leadership, Milliken’s Information Services team would have non-disclosure briefings every two years with companies like SAS, IBM, DEC (no longer viable), DELL, HP, SAP, and Microsoft. Garry also led Milliken to utilize consulting companies like Forrester and Gartner.He, along with other Milliken associates, contributed further by visiting area universities, making presentations about Milliken and scoping out graduating students whom they believed would be an asset to the company and who under Milliken leadership had the potential to advance. They were fortunate to be able to attract a number of North Carolina State University graduates to join Milliken. Garry Williams had a tremendous positive impact on Milliken and was vital to the success the company continues to experience today. He was an innovator, a risk taker, a motivator, and a dedicated associate. Despite this, he was not interested in personal recognition, rather he pushed his team toward their personal success. He was a mentor to people at all levels. He recognized individuals’ talents and taught them how to develop that talent to help, not only the company, but also build their individual confidence, ability, and self-worth. Garry was considerate and respectful of everyone he encountered, both personally and professionally. II. COMMUNITY AND /OR PUBLIC SERVICEIn addition to all he endeavored to accomplish professionally, Garry devoted himself personally and was always willing to help anyone regardless of need or relationship. He gave his time and financial support to local community initiatives and religious and charitable organizations such as his local church, United Way of Spartanburg, SC, Goodwill Industries, Mayo Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and others. He participated in local fundraising projects, often organizing and leading the effort. He served as his neighborhood’s March of Dimes representative, and worked to contact each resident seeking donations. He also sponsored numerous participants in the annual March of Dimes “March for Babies.” Garry was an active board member for his local Homeowners Association. Blessed with the natural talent to do most anything, when HOA projects came along he was always willing and pleased to volunteer.Garry Benjamin Williams passed away May 16, 2016. The Williams family would like to express sincere appreciation to Mrs. Donna Sue LeJeune, Mr. Jim McCabe, and Mr. Robert Walker for their valued contribution to this nomination.