Julie M. Hays, PhD, died shortly before this book published. She was an associate professor in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, MN. She was the 1998 recipient of the Juran Fellowship awarded by the Juran Center for Leadership in Quality at the University of Minnesota. She had published articles in the Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences, Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, and the Journal of Service Research.