Mohammad Ali

Professor Mohammad M Ali is a dynamic leader with expertise in the higher education sector and in the automotive industry. Mohammad is highly proficient in creating strategies for capability development and for the production of high-quality deliverables. He is also skilled in creating teaching and learning delivery models focused on personalised learning, technology enhanced learning and learning by doing.

View Mohammad's LinkedIn profile

Background

Mohammad is currently the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean in the Faculty of Business and Law at ARU. Before his life as an academic, Mohammad worked first as a consultant engineer and then as a supply chain manager in the automotive industry. During his tenure in the industry Mohammad has worked on various projects including value analysis, demand planning, inventor control and ERP/MRP implementations.

Mohammad holds a doctorate from Brunel University. His thesis discussed various new collaborative forecasting approaches in supply chains. He has completed a MSc in Business Performance Management, an Executive Certificate in Leadership and Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a postgraduate diploma in Information Technology. Mohammad's first degree was in Mechanical Engineering.

Research interests

Mohammad's research interests include:

• Forecasting for Social Good
• Supply Chain Information Sharing
• ARIMA Modelling
• Demand Planning and Forecasting

Teaching

Mohammad is well versed in designing and developing innovative and forward-looking portfolio of programmes. He has also designed and successfully delivered a number of modern, start of the art multi-million teaching and learning facilities (notably Strategy and Marketing Analysis Lab in partnership with Amazon Web Services) based on teaching and learning delivery models focused on personalised learning, technology enhanced learning and learning by doing.

Qualifications

Mohammad has a broad educational profile with an Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership from MIT, PhD in Business Forecasting from Brunel, MSc in Business Performance Management from Salford and BEng in Mechanical Engineering from NED University.

Memberships, editorial boards

Mohammad's external profile includes Non-Executive position/Council Member at the Chartered Association of Business Schools and Guangdong Distinguished Overseas Professor Award granted by Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, China.

He also frequently engages with various membership bodies e.g. he is currently the judge for the British Academy of Management Education Practice Awards and in the past has been a board member in the Government Advisory Board for changes in the ISO manufacturing standards for automotive parts, a judge for the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) for the supply chain case competition and an Academic Auditor for the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT).

Selected recent publications

Mohammad is an active researcher in business forecasting with a number of publications in journals of outstanding quality - 70% of current peer-reviewed journal publications are in 3*/4* journals (Chartered ABS).

• Rostami-Tabar, B., Ali, M.M., T. Hong et al., (2022) “Forecasting for social good”, International Journal of Forecasting, 38(3) (3* ABS). (J), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169207021000510?via%3Dihub
• Rostami-Tabar, B., Babai, M.Z., Ali, M.M., Boylan J.E., (2018) “The impact of temporal aggregation on supply chains with ARMA(1,1) demand processes”, European Journal of Operational Research, 273 (3), 920-932 (4* ABS). (J), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221718307562
• Ali, M.M., Babai, M.Z., Boylan J.E., Syntetos, A.A. (2017) “A Forecasting Strategy for Supply Chains where Information is not Shared”, European Journal of Operational Research, 260 (3), 984-994 (4* ABS). (P), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221716309717
• Babai, M.Z., Boylan J.E., Syntetos, A.A., Ali, M.M. (2016) “Reduction of the Value of Information Sharing as Demand becomes strongly Auto-correlated”, International Journal of Production Economics, 181, Part A, 130-135 (3* ABS). (J)
• Babai, M.Z., Ali, M.M, Syntetos, A. and Boylan, J.E. (2013) “Forecasting and Inventory Performance in a Two-Stage Supply Chain with ARIMA (0,1,1) Demand: Theory and Empirical Analysis”, International Journal of Production Economics, 143 (2), 463 – 471. (3* ABS) (J ), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527311003902
• Ali, M.M., Syntetos, A., Boylan J.E. (2012) “On the Relationship between Forecast Errors and Inventory performance”, International Journal of Forecasting, 28 (4), 830- 841. (3* ABS) (P), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016920701100015X
• Babai, M.Z., Ali, M.M. and Nikolopoulos, K. (2012), “Impact of Temporal Aggregation on Stock Control Performance of Intermittent Demand Estimators: Empirical Analysis”, OMEGA: The International Journal of Management Science, 40(6), 713-721. (3* ABS) (J)
• Ali, M.M. and Boylan J.E. (2012) “Effect of Non-Optimal Forecasting Methods on Supply Chain Downstream demand inference”, IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, 23(1), 81-98. (2* ABS) (P). (TThis was included in the ‘Most Read’ article list for 2012 and 2013 by the Journal.)
• Ali, M.M, Boylan J.E. (2011) Feasibility principles for downstream demand inference in supply chains. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 62, 472 – 482. (3* ABS) (P)
• Ali, M.M. and Boylan, J.E (2010) The Value of Forecast Information Sharing in the Supply Chain, Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, 18, 14-18. (1* ABS) (P)

Refereed conference papers – in print/press

Keynote paper:

• Ali, MM & Boylan, JE (2014), On the value of sharing demand information in supply chains. in S Howick (ed.), OR56 Annual Conference - Keynote Papers. The OR Society, pp. 44-56, 56th Annual Conference of the Operational Research Society, Egham, United Kingdom, 9/09/14. (P)

Other refereed conference papers:

• Rostami-Tabar, B, Babai, MZ, Ali, MM. & Boylan, JE. (2016), ‘On the performance of temporal demand aggregation when optimal forecasting is used.’ in ILS 2016 - 6th International Conference on Information Systems, Logistics and Supply Chain. International Conference on Information Systems, Logistics and Supply Chain, Bordeaux, France, 1/06/16. (J)
• Ali, M.M., Babai, M.Z., Boylan J.E., Syntetos, A.A. (2015) “On the use of simple moving averages for supply chains when information is not shared, IFAC papers online, 48 (3), pp. 1756 – 1761. (P)
• Ali, M.M. & Hill, J. (2007), Profitable Experiences from a Business Simulation Game. in European Conference on Games Based Learning : ECGBL 2007. Academic Conferences Ltd, pp. 1-6, European Conference on Games-Based Learning, Paisley, United Kingdom, 25/10/07. (P)

Media experience

Mohammad was featured in the documentary The Era of Convergence: Tracking the Merge of Traditional and Decentralised Finance, which is a highly demanded exposé that addresses these pressing questions and equips us with the knowledge and tools to seize the opportunities of our new reality. The full documentary can be accessed on YouTube.