About

Agha Iqbal Ali is a Professor and Chairman of the Operations & Information Management Department in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He emphasizes the complexity of decision-making in the 21st century, highlighting the importance of complex decision-making tools for future managers and leaders. His extensive academic training in the mathematical and cybernetic sciences, culminating in a Ph.D. in Operations Research, underpins his work. Professor Ali has developed and implemented mathematical models of complex business processes over the past four decades, with experience spanning strategic, tactical, and operational decision making in areas such as regional infrastructure, business logistics, productivity assessment, performance evaluation, demand-shortfall management, supply chains, and manpower chains. He leverages his rich historical knowledge to identify inefficiencies in infrastructure, practices, and protocols that hinder productivity and competitive advantage. He advocates for optimizing multi-criteria objectives to reveal complex managerial trade-offs and impacts of decision alternatives. Additionally, Professor Ali teaches courses including Introductory Operations Management and Business Process Optimization, and has delivered seminars and courses worldwide. He has advised upper management of public and private sector organizations, including some Fortune 500 companies, and has published in prestigious journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Networks, Naval Research Logistics, Journal of the Operational Research Society, and European Journal of Operational Research. His work is cited annually in over 100 scholarly articles.

Research topics

• Computer science
• Mathematical optimization
• Mathematics
• Algorithm
• Operations research

Selected publications

• Infrastructural and Operational Effectiveness of Banks in India: An Empirical Analysis

  South Asian Journal of Management · 2025-05-06

  article

  The South Asian Journal of Management (SAJM) is a scholarly academic journal, published quarterly, by the Association of Management Development Institutions in South Asia (AMDISA). AMDISA is an international not for profit association and a "Recognised Body" of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) - the inter-governmental agency. To know more about AMDISA and its activites please visit http://www.amdisa.org.

  PublisherDOI

• Distress among disaster-affected populations: delay in relief provision

  Journal of the Operational Research Society · 2016-10-20 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Central to humanitarian logistics is the minimization of distress among impacted populations in the aftermath of a disaster. In this paper, we characterize two levels of distress, termed criticality and destitution, with respect to the delay provision of relief items. Delay in provision of a relief item will lead to destitution for a tolerable number of days, beyond which it will lead to criticality. We develop a mixed-integer goal program that quantifies these two metrics with respect to the number of days without provision of each of a set of relief items. The model determines the allocation of resources and the distribution of available relief items in a manner that minimizes criticality and destitution in affected population segments. The use of the model is demonstrated for the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake in Istanbul, expected to occur by 2030.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prescriptive analytics for FIFA World Cup lodging capacity planning

  Journal of the Operational Research Society · 2016-12-15 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  The FIFA World Cup, comprising sixty-four matches spanning an entire month, has, in recent years, been attended by about three million spectators of which over half a million are visitors requiring lodging. Planning lodging capacity for an event of this magnitude is necessary for host nations where pre-existing infrastructures are either inadequate or lacking. This paper develops an optimization analytics framework that sequentially employs two integer programming models for foreign spectator analysis and the consequent lodging requirements. The framework is applied to assess the preparedness of lodging infrastructure in Qatar for FIFA 2022.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Using predetermined partial solutions for solving a heterogeneous truck fleet distribution model

  International Journal of Planning and Scheduling · 2014-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper makes use of partial solutions to solve a two–echelon heterogeneous truck fleet distribution model with single–sourced distribution centres. The partial solutions are predetermined using an algorithmic procedure that determines the mix of trucks to deploy to a demand point by relating the required shipment volume to the cost and capacity of each truck type. The partial solutions reduce the feasible region of the associated mixed–integer programming model, which is then solved to obtain the complete solution. A computational study demonstrates that solutions for prototypical two–echelon distribution scenarios with up to 32 distribution centres and 1,600 demand points can be obtained within a few seconds of computation time.

  PublisherDOI

• Using truck-inventory-cost to obtain solutions to multi-period logistics models

  International Journal of Production Economics · 2013-01-05 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Evaluating capacity management tactics for a legacy manufacturing plant

  Journal of the Operational Research Society · 2013-07-31 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Robust capacity improvement tactics, namely acquisition of assets and enhanced flexibility in product manufacturing, that alleviate mismatches between required and available capacity are revealed by data analytics. Improvement brought about by these tactics as measured by two performance metrics, production makespan and product availability, is assessed using optimization methodology. This paper demonstrates the value of analysing demand and product specification data to inform capacity re-calibration in an S&P 500 company in the chemical industry. The tactic recommended for implementation, which yielded up to a doubling of the capacity, emerged from an empirical analysis of data for five prototypical planning periods.

  PublisherDOI

• Pure Network-Based Procedures for Constrained Assignment Problems in Naval Personnel Planning

  Military Operations Research · 2010-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The impact of distribution system characteristics on computational tractability

  European Journal of Operational Research · 2009-01-11 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• DEA Malmquist productivity measure: New insights with an application to computer industry

  European Journal of Operational Research · 2003-10-09 · 197 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Ranking industry performance in the US

  Socio-Economic Planning Sciences · 2003-12-04 · 14 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffery L. Kennington

  Southern Methodist University

  5 shared

• Lawrence M. Seiford

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  5 shared

• Catherine S. Lerme

  3 shared

• Jeff Kennington

  Southern Methodist University

  2 shared

• Debra J. O’Connor

  College of the Holy Cross

  2 shared

• Hyunsoo Han

  2 shared

• Robert A. Nakosteen

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  2 shared

• H. Lall

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Operations Research

  University of Massachusetts Amherst