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Glen Barton
14
thePeorian.com
S
ome days Glen Barton isn’t
sure he is retired, even
though that’s what they
called it when he left Caterpillar
Inc. in 2004 after five years as the
company’s chairman and CEO.
He keeps finding things to do
with his time, some of it what
he seeks out and some of it what
others ask him to do. But the bot-
tom line is simple:
“I just want to make Peoria
a better place to live. Polly (his
wife) and I both want that. So
we want to tackle issues that are
important to the community,
such as education, to make that
happen. I have more opportuni-
ties to do things than I have time
to do them, as you can imagine,
but I also can decide which ones
to devote most of my efforts to
doing,” Barton said recently.
The interview for this story
was by telephone as he and Polly
are vacationing in California,
which they try to always do dur-
ing the first couple months of the
year. “Part of being retired is be-
ing able to get away for a couple
months when we want to, so I
don’t want to be too tied down,”
he said.
But when he’s in Peoria, his ad-
opted home because of his long
and distinguished career at Cat-
erpillar, he can be found meeting
with potential start-up business
entrepreneurs, attending a board
meeting or even wielding a paint
brush, as he did in preparing the
former Loucks School on North
University Street to become the
new Quest Charter Academy last
year.
“Whatever it takes, if I think
it’s worthy I want to help,” Bar-
ton said.
Barton is a native of Alton, Mo.,
and grew up with his family on
his grandfather’s farm.
“We lived on a small farm. My
father worked in the Post Office
so my Grandfather and we three
boys sort of ran the farm. My
oldest brother was 8 years older
and then my next 2 years older.
We sort of got the turn to be the
‘go to’ guy. It was tough to make
a living off poor Ozark Mountain
land but all of us earned much of
our college expenses raising pigs,
doing farm work for others, that
sort of thing,” he said.
Barton went to the University
of Missouri-Columbia and earned
a bachelor’s degree in civil engi-
neering in 1961. Soon thereafter
he joined Caterpillar as a college
graduate trainee and began a 43-
year career that culminated with
his ascension to the top of the
world’s largest heavy equipment
manufacturer.
While he was chairman, Cater-
pillar implemented the 6 Sigma
operating method throughout the
company, a method proven to
enhance efficiency and improve
quality and safety. Barton said
implementing 6 Sigma, which has
since been emulated at compa-
nies and organizations through-
out the Peoria region, was prob-
ably the biggest single and most
important contribution he made
at Caterpillar.
“I would like to think there
were many contributions. There
are many things I am proud of,
such as the fact that while I was
chairman we never went through
a single quarter with a loss even
though we went through a reces-
sion early in my tenure. I don’t
think we would have been able
to accomplish that without 6
Sigma,” he said.
Barton also noted that he was
part of Caterpillar structural
reorganization in the late 1980s
under then-CEO George Schaefer.
That reorganization, which split
the company into business units
that were each responsible for
their own operations and profits
or losses, was key to helping the
company survive and grow. Before
then, Barton said, the company
never had a year where it made a
profit when sales were down.
Retirement?
What’s That?
Glen Barton’s post-Caterpillar ‘career’ is
helping improve education in Peoria, grow
new businesses
By Paul Gordon