About our authors
Thomas Foster is the Donald Staheli Professor and department chair of marketing and global supply chain management at Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management. He is an internationally recognized expert in quality and global supply chain management and has experience in manufacturing, financial services, and international oil exploration.
He has consulted for more than 30 organizations, including Eaton/Cutler Hammer, Hewlett-Packard, Heinz Frozen Foods, Hyundai Corporation, and the US Department of Energy.
Foster has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Operation Management and Decision Sciences and is Editor in Chief of the Quality Management Journal. He has published more than 80 articles in journals such as Decision Sciences, Journal of Operations Management, International Journal of Production Research, and Quality Management Journal. His book Quality Management: Integrating the Supply Chain is an international best-seller. He recently served on the Malcolm Baldrige Board of Overseers and was awarded the prestigious Instructional Innovation Award from the Decision Sciences Institute.
Scott Sampson is the Hazel S. Thorsell Professor of global supply chain management with the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He teaches MBA, executive MBA, and undergraduate courses in services management and customer relationship management.
Sampson is the author of the books Understanding Service Businesses and Essentials of Service Design and Innovation. His award-winning research involves service design paradigms, service quality measurement, and service supply chains. He has published research in leading academic journals, including Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, Decision Sciences, and Journal of Operations Management. He received his MBA and PhD degrees from the University of Virginia and taught at Florida State University prior to joining the Brigham Young University faculty.
Cindy Wallin is an associate professor of global supply chain management at Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management. She earned her PhD in supply chain management from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Wallin's research focuses on buyer-supplier interfaces in the form of trust-based relationships, information sharing, collaboration, and collaborative inventory management approaches. Her research has been published in various journals, including Decision Sciences Journal, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Quality Management Journal, and Journal of Business Logistics.
Before pursuing her doctoral studies, Wallin was a commodity team manager for Intel Corporation. During her eight years at Intel, she also held the positions of senior buyer, purchasing manager, stores manager, and commodity manager. Before her graduate studies, Wallin also worked as an auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
Scott Webb is an associate professor of global supply chain management at Brigham Young University and specializes in logistics management. He received his PhD in logistics and operations management from the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. In addition to his PhD, he earned an MS degree in logistics management from the Air Force Institute of Technology and a BA in experimental psychology from the College of Idaho.
During his Air Force career, Webb worked on both base and Pentagon-level assignments. He separated from active duty military service in 2008 at the rank of major and after earning both AF Commendation Medals and the AF Meritorious Service Medal.