William Michael Barnes ’64 is the inaugural recipient of the Texas Council of Industrial Engineering Academic Department Heads Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to him April 2 at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering annual awards banquet. Presenters were Dr. Brett Peters, head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M, and Hamid Parsaei, chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Houston and chair of the Texas CIEADH.

Barnes earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering in 1964 and 1966; and a Ph.D. in operations research in 1968, all at Texas A&M. Early in his career, Barnes served as expert consultant to the assistant postmaster in Washington, D. C. He also served for a while as an instructor of maintainability engineering for Texas A&M at the U.S. Army Logistics Training Center, and as a visiting professor of computer science at Southern Methodist University.

In 1968, Barnes joined Collins Radio as a member of the Corporate Operations Research Staff. Collins was acquired by Rockwell in 1971, and in 1972 Barnes was named director of finance for the Rockwell MOS/ Components Division. In 1973, he was promoted to vice President and general manager of Rockwell Collins Communications Switching Systems Division. From 1968-1989, he also served as liaison executive to the Allen Bradley Company, a leader in factory automation.

From 1991 until his retirement in 2001, Barnes served as senior vice president and CFO of Rockwell International. At the time of his retirement, Rockwell was a multibillion-dollar industrial manufacturing company with businesses in aerospace, defense electronics, semiconductor systems, factory automation products, automotive components, and graphic systems.

Barnes has served on numerous boards and councils, including Independent Colleges of Southern California, Orange County Business Council, A.O. Smith Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Metro PCS. He was named an Outstanding Alumnus by the Dwight Look College of Engineering in 1992 and by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in 2002. Barnes is a member of the Chancellor’s Century Council and serves on the college’s Engineering Advisory Council.

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