Biography
Professor Walton joined Goizueta Business School in the Fall of 1996. After receiving his PhD in 1993 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Steve served on the faculties of North Carolina A&T State University and Baylor University. Steve's efforts in the classroom have been highlighted by 11 teaching awards, including The Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, a university-wide honor, and the Adler Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Before coming to Emory, Steve also worked for IBM.
Steve's current interests include strategic execution, operational decision making and the impact of leadership on operations outcomes. Steve has published in Journal of Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Purchasing and Materials Management and the Proceedings of the Decision Sciences Institute. Professor Walton also serves as a reviewer for Decision Sciences, Journal of Operations Management, the Journal of Supply Chain Management and Organization Science.
Steve's consulting clients include Sony, First Data, UPS, The Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, Usher’s New Look Foundation, SunTrust, Panasonic, McKesson Information Solutions, The Arthur M. Blank Family Office, Siemens Medical Systems, Synovus and others.
Education
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PhD in Operations ManagementUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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MA in Industrial ManagementClemson University
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BS in Industrial ManagementClemson University
Strategic supply chain choices for multi-channel Internet retailers
Multi-channel retailing—selling through multiple, distinct channels—has been a part of the retail industry as long as there have been main street merchants selling through catalogs. Since the mid-1990s, however, multi-channel retailing has increased dramatically due to traditional retailers selling over the Internet. This trend presents considerable operational challenges because Internet and traditional retail have vastly different demand drivers, product variety issues, optimal inventory configurations, cost structures, supply chain structures, and delivery mechanisms. Consequently, the optimal supply chain configuration for Internet delivery differs considerably from the optimal supply chain configuration for a retail store structure, so designing a supply chain system to serve both channels well is difficult. Accordingly, a set of strategic choices and trade-offs must be made. Here, we present some strategic alternatives.
E-commerce Solutions to Environmental Purchasing
The dot-com bubble that burst in March 2000 marked the end of an amazing run of unbelievable hype. It turned out, for example, that profits actually do matter and that first to market is often the same as first to bankruptcy. But in the same way that the impact of electronic commerce (e-commerce) on business was never as large as the hype promised, the impact of e-commerce on business in general and purchasing and materials management in particular is larger than the post-bubble pessimism suggests...
Applying environmental criteria to supplier assessment: A study in the application of the Analytical Hierarchy Process
In this study, we illustrate the use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a decision support model to help managers understand the trade-offs between environmental dimensions. We then demonstrate how AHP can be used to evaluate the relative importance of various environmental traits and to assess the relative performance of several suppliers along these traits...