Roger Milliken at the 1999 NTA Annual Meeting

Roger Milliken

Roger Milliken was born October 24, 1915, in New York, the son of Gerrish and Agnes Gayley Milliken. He graduated from Groton School in 1933 and received a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University in 1937.

He was named a director of Deering Milliken in 1941 and president in 1947. He moved with his family to Spartanburg in 1954, his home ever since. In 1976, Deering Milliken officially became Milliken & Company. Milliken served as president of the company until 1988, when he was named chairman and chief executive officer, his present title.

For years, Roger Milliken and Milliken & Company have been prominently associated with the American quality movement that followed W. Edwards Deming's work with Japanese industrialists after World War II. Milliken instituted its own Pursuit of Excellence process in 1981 and in 1989 won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Since then, Milliken has won the European Quality Award, the British Quality Award, and the Canadian Award for Business Excellence.

Milliken's Pursuit of Excellence process, in which all Milliken associates are encouraged to share their thoughts on how quality might be achieved, is featured in the book A Passion for Excellence, co-authored by Tom Peters, whose In Search of Excellence was a bestseller among business books.

Roger Milliken was the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce's Businessman of the Year in 1981. He received the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce's Neville Holcombe Distinguished Citizenship Award in 1985. In 1991, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce named him its Citizen of the Carolinas, and Brookgreen Gardens presented him its American Achievement Award.

He is chairman of the Greenville/Spartanburg Airport Commission and Crafted With Pride in the U.S.A. Council, Inc., and a director of Milliken & Company, the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, and the South Carolina Textile Manufacturers Association. He is also a member of The Business Council and Ludwig von Mises Institute's Entrepreneurs Council.

Milliken is a former director of Citicorp, Arthur D. Little, Inc., Mercantile Stores, Inc., W. R. Grace & Company, and Westinghouse Electric Corporation.

Milliken served as chairman of the board of trustees of the Institute of Textile Technology in Charlottesville, Virginia, from 1944 to 1997, and ITT's Roger Milliken Textile Library honors his many contributions to the school. Milliken now serves as chairman emeritus.

In 1998, the South Carolina Quality Forum established the annual Roger Milliken Medal of Quality Award, and Milliken was the first recipient. The award recognizes an individual who exemplifies leadership in quality initiatives in South Carolina.

He is a trustee of Wofford College, Spartanburg Day School, and the South Carolina Foundation of Independent Colleges. A former president of the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, he is a member of the advisory boards of Brookgreen Gardens and the Institute for Political Economy.

He has received honorary degrees from Clemson University, Wofford College, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, Converse College, Brenau College, The Citadel, University of South Carolina at Spartanburg, LaGrange College, and Furman University. He married Justine Van Rensselaer Hooper on June 5, 1948. They have five children: Justine V. R. Milliken Russell, Nancy, Roger, Jr., David Gayley, and Weston Freeman Milliken.

Milliken entered the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1985 and the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 1998. In 1989 the Northern Textile Association presented him with is Silver Medal and again honored him in 1999 with its Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year Textile World Magazine (December 1999) named him Leader of the Century. In April 2000, he was inducted into the National Business Hall of Fame. In 2001 the American Textile History Museum inducted him into the Textile Hall of Fame; he delived this Acceptance Speech.

On April 15, 2008, Roger Milliken was presented with the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC) American Manufacturing Visionary Award.