Alistair Clark
Room 3Q73
Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics
University of the West of England
Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane
Bristol, BS16 1QY, England.

tel: +44 (0) 117 328 3134      fax: +44 (0) 117 328 3002
e-mail: Alistair dot Clark -at- uwe dot ac dot uk

Alistair Clark is a Reader in Operational Research (OR) and Associate Head of Dept for Research & Scholarship in the Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics at the University of the West of England.   He was formerly a Production Systems Specialist at UniSoma (an OR consulting and systems development company in Brazil), an academic adviser at IBM's Latin American Institute of Technology, an analyst in the UK Government OR Service, a lecturer at several UK universities, and a VSO volunteer Maths teacher at Wa Secondary School in the Upper West region of Ghana, West Africa.  

His research interests centre on the development of models and heuristic methods for problems of production planning and scheduling.  Such problems are often highly complex and can be solved to optimality for only very small instances.  As a result, approximate models and solution methods are developed, suitable for operational use, making use of integer programming and metaheuristic approaches.   He is also interested in humanitarian logistics, nurse shift rescheduling with minimal disruption, free (or nearly-free) software for OR, the mathematical modelling of Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC), and the application of OR in emerging economies & developing countries.

Alistair has led production planning & scheduling consulting and systems development assignments for Polyenka, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Matthew Clark Brands plc, and Tilibra, Brazil's market leader in school and office stationary.   Alistair has also co-ordinated statistical data-gathering & analysis studies for Rhodia, and consulted on Statistical Disclosure Control for the UK's Office for National Statistics. He carries out joint research with the University of Porto (FEUP) in Portugal, the University of São Paulo (USP) at São Carlos, the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), and the São Paulo State University (Unesp) at São José do Rio Preto, and has close links with the University of Campinas (Unicamp), the latter four all being in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

He is a Fellow of the UK Operational Research Society (ORS) and is Editor-in-Chief of the society's practice-oriented journal OR Insight (to which he invites practitioner-oriented submissions of various kinds).

Research Grants

Principal Investigator, Integrated Setup Sequencing & Lot-Sizing in Production Scheduling, funded by the EPSRC, (reference: EP/D000483/1) with the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, funded by the CNPq, evaluated as Outstanding in its overall assessment by EPSRC, with the top ranking in all 7 criteria.

Principal Investigator, Improvements to Cell Suppression in Statistical Disclosure Control, funded by the Office for National Statistics, UK.

Co-Investigator, Mathematical Modelling of Statistical Disclosure Control, EPSRC CASE PhD studentship, co-funded by the Office for National Statistics, UK.

Principal Investigator, International Travel Grant, Royal Academy of Engineering, March-April 2008. UK.

Co-investigator, Extensões industriais ao problema de planejamento e programação da produção (ref. 005/09), Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), Ministry of Education, Brazil, under its Programa Geral de Cooperação Internacional, October 2009 to October 2011.

Principal Investigator and Main Coordinator, EU-Brazil joint research, Industrial Extensions to Production Planning and Scheduling, funded under the European Union’s Framework 7 Programme, Marie Curie Actions (People), International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES), with partner universities: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFScar), and Universidade Estadual Paulista, (UNESP), May 2010 - April 2013.

Principal Investigator, Global Research Award, Royal Academy of Engineering, Industrial Extensions to Production Planning and Scheduling, UK-Brazil joint research, July 2010 - September 2012.

Publications and Conference Presentations

Ferreira D., Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B., and Morabito R., Single-stage formulations for syncronised two-stage lot sizing and scheduling in soft-drink production, International Journal of Production Economics, in press.

Clark A. R., Humanitarian Supply Chain Network Models for Disaster Relief, LAND-TRANSLOG II Workshop, Puerto Varas, Chile, 12-15 December 2011

Clark A. R., and Walker H., Nurse rescheduling with shift preferences and minimal disruption, Journal of Applied Operational Research, vol 3, no. 3, 2011, pp 148-162.

Carretero M. M., Rangel S., and Clark A. R., Lifted inequalities for a soft-drink lot-scheduling model, 43rd Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society, Ubatuba, Brazil, 15-18 August, 2011.

Clark A. R., and Mahdieh M., Production lot sizing and scheduling with non-triangular sequence-dependent setup times, 43rd Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society, Ubatuba, Brazil, 15-18 August, 2011.

Ferreira D., Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B., and Morabito R., Comparação entre duas estratégias de eliminação de subtours para um modelo de dimensionamento e sequenciamento de lotes baseado no modelo ATSP, 43rd Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society, Ubatuba, Brazil, 15-18 August, 2011.

Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B. and Almeder C., Editorial: Lot sizing and scheduling - industrial extensions and research opportunities, International Journal of Production Research, special issue on Lot Sizing and Scheduling, vol 49, no. 9, May 2011, pp 2457-2461.

Menezes A. A., Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B., Capacitated Lotsizing and Scheduling with Sequence-dependent, Period Overlapping and Non-Triangular Setups Journal of Scheduling, vol. 14, no. 2, April 2011, pp 209-219.

Aickelin U. and Clark A., Editorial, Journal of the Operational Research Society, special issue on Heuristic Optimisation, vol. 62, no. 2, February 2011, pp 251-252.

Scarpa E. M. and Clark A. R., Review of Mia Couto’s novel A River called Time, translated from Um rio chamado Tempo, uma casa chamada Terra, African Literature Today, vol 28, 2010/11, pp 147-148.

Ferreira D., Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B., and Morabito R., Modelagem do problema de programação de bebidas baseado em um modelo do tipo ATSP, 42nd Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society, Bento Gonçalves, Brazil, 30 August - 3 September 2010.

Araújo S. A. and Clark A. R., Reformulações e metaheurísticas para um problema de dimensionamento de lotes e programação do processamento de materiais, 42nd Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society, Bento Gonçalves, Brazil, 30 August - 3 September 2010.

Alistair Clark, Jim Freeman, and Tolga Bektas, Editorial on new features of the journal, OR Insight, vol. 23, no. 3, September 2010, pp 151-152.

Ferreira D., Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B., and Morabito R., A single-stage ATSP-type model for lot sizing and sequencing in a beverage production process, 24th European Conference on Operational Research, Lisbon, 11–14 July 2010.

Clark A. R., Morabito R., and Toso E. A. V., Production Setup-Sequencing and Lot-Sizing at an Animal Nutrition Plant through ATSP Subtour Elimination and Patching, Journal of Scheduling, vol. 13, no. 2, April 2010, pp 111-121.

Alistair Clark, Mathematical programming modelling tools for resource-poor countries and organisations, OR Insight, vol. 23, no. 1, 2010, pp 57-70.

Toso E. A. V., Morabito R., and Clark A. R., Lot-Sizing and Sequencing Optimisation at an Animal-Feed Plant, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Volume 57, 2009, pp 813-821.

Alistair Clark, Jim Freeman,and Tolga Bektas, Editorial on the practitioner-oriented nature of submissions, OR Insight, vol. 22, no. 3, 2009, pp 125–126. doi:10.1057/ori.2009.6.

J.E. Smith and A. Clark and A. Staggemeier. A Genetic Approach to Statistical Disclosure Control, Proceedings of Gecco, the ACM-SIGEVO conference on Evolutionary Computation, pages 1625-1632. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2009.

Menezes A. A., Clark A. R., Almada-Lobo B., Capacitated Lotsizing and Scheduling with Sequence-dependent, Period Overlapping and Non Triangular Setups, 23rd European Conference on Operational Research, Bonn, July 5 - 8, 2009.

Toso E. A. V., Morabito R., and Clark A. R., Combinação de Abordagens GLSP e ATSP para o Problema de Dimensionamento e Sequenciamento de Lotes de Produção de Suplementos para Nutrição Animal, Pesquisa Operacional (journal of the Brazilian Operational Research Society), Volume 28, number 3, pp 423-450, Setembro a Dezembro de 2008.

Martin Serpell, Alistair Clark, Jim Smith and Andrea Staggemeier, Pre-processing Optimisation Applied to the Classical Integer Programming Model for Statistical Disclosure Control, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 5262, 2008, pp 24-36, Springer

Clark A. R., Reflections on Rescheduling , 50th Conference of the Operational Research Society, York, 8-10 September 2008.

Toso, E. A. V., Morabito, R. and Clark, A. R., Dimensionamento e Sequenciamento de Lotes na Indústria De Suplementos Para Nutrição Animal, 30th Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society, João Pessoa, Brazil, 2-5 September 2008.

Clark A. R. and Walker H., Nurse Rescheduling , 18th Triennial Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies, Johannesburg, 13-18 July 2008.

Clark A. R. and Culkin B., A Network Trans-shipment Model for Planning Humanitarian Relief Operations after a Natural Disaster, presented at EURO XXII - 22nd European Conference on Operational Research, Prague, July 2007.

A.S. Staggemeier, A.R. Clark, J.E. Smith and J. Thompson. Improving Our Knowledge of Metaheuristic Approaches for the Cell Suppression Problem, Proceedings of Joint UNECE/Eurostat work session on statistical data confidentiality, 2007.

Clark A. R., Morabito R., and Toso E. A. V., Multi-period Production Setup-sequencing and Lot-sizing through ATSP Subtour Elimination and Patching , Proceedings of the 25th Workshop of the UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group (PlanSIG 2006), December 14-15, 2006, University of Nottingham, pp 80-87, ISSN 1368-5708.

Toso E. A. V., Morabito R., and Clark A. R., Uma Abordagem ATSP para o Problema de Dimensionamento e Sequenciamento de Lotes na Indústria de Nutrição Animal , presented at the 38th Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society (SOBRAPO), Goiânia GO, Brazil, 12-15 September 2006.

Araújo S. A. de, Arenales M. N. and Clark A. R., Lot-Sizing and Furnace Scheduling in Small Foundries, Computers and Operations Research. vol. 35, issue 3, pp 916-932, March 2008.

Araújo S. A. de, Arenales M. N. and Clark A. R., Joint Rolling-Horizon Scheduling of Materials Processing and Lot-Sizing with Sequence-Dependent Setups, Journal of Heuristics , vol. 13, no. 4, August 2007, pp 337-358.

Culkin B. and Clark A. R., “A Network Transshipment Model for Planning Humanitarian Relief Operations after a Natural Disaster”, Young OR Conference, Bath University, March 2007 and EURO XXII - 22nd European Conference on Operational Research, Prague, July 2007.

Clark A. R., Morabito R. and Toso E. A. V., Integrated setup-sequencing and lot-sizing in animal feed production scheduling, 19th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, ISMP 2006, Rio de Janeiro, 2nd August 2006.

Clark A. R., Modeling and Technology for Making Quantitative Managerial Decisions, 20th Scientific International Conference, Hanoi University of Technology, Vietnam, 12-13 October 2006.  

Clark A. R. and Hendricksen D., A project management model for joint short-term scheduling and longer-term planning, 17th Triennial Conference of the International Federation of Operational Societies, Hawaii, 11-15 July 2005

Clark A. R., Free (or nearly-free) software for Operational Research, Tutorial presentation, First Conference on Operational Research Practice in Africa (ORPA-1), 7-8 April 2005, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. List of such software (with links)

Clark A. R., OR with Spreadsheets, Tutorial presentation, First Conference on Operational Research Practice in Africa (ORPA-1), 7-8 April 2005, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Clark A. R., Rolling horizon heuristics for production and setup planning with backlogs and error-prone demand forecasts, Production Planning and Control., vol. 16, issue 1, January 2005, pp 81-97.

Clark A. R. “Hybrid heuristics for planning lot setups and sizes”, Encuentro Internacional sobre Sistemas Inteligentes, La Laguna, Tenerife, 28 October 2003, and also at Beijing Institute of Technology, China, November 2004.

Clark A. R. “AMPL - A Mathematical Programming Language”, University of Cairo, Egypt, September 2004, and also at Beijing Institute of Technology, China, November 2004.

Clark A. R and Yager R. “Prioritized objective functions for the planning of backlogs and inventory in multi-product single-stage lot-sizing with setup times”, 20th European Conference on Operational Research, Rhodes, July 2004.

Araújo S. A. de, Arenales M. N. and Clark A. R., Dimensionamento de Lotes e Programação do Forno numa Fundição de Pequeno Porte, Gestão e Produção, vol. 11, no. 2, Mai-Ago 2004, pp 165-176, ISSN 0104-530X.

Clark A. R., Hybrid Heuristics for Planning Lot Sizes and Setups , Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 45, issue 4, pp 545-562, December 2003.

Clark A. R., "Rolling horizon heuristics for production and setup planning with backlogs and error-prone demand forecasts", EURO-Informs Joint International Meeting, July 2003, also presented at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, August 2003.

Clark A. R., Optimization Approximations for Capacity Constrained Material Requirements Planning Problems, International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 84, issue 2, pp 115-131, May 2003.

A. T. Staggemeier, A. R. Clark, J. Smith, and L. Bull, "Genetic Algorithm & Linear Programming to Solve a Lot-Sizing and Scheduling Problem”, Sixth Workshop on Models and Algorithms for Planning and Scheduling Problems (MAPSP'03), March-April 2003 Aussois, France.

Araújo S. A. de, Arenales M. N. and Clark A. R., A Lot-Sizing and Scheduling Problem in a Foundry, Notas n° 68, Série Computação, Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação, Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos SP, Brazil, Fevereiro de 2003, ISSN 0103-2577.

Clark A. R., Approximate Combinatorial Optimization Models for Large-Scale Production Lot Sizing and Scheduling with Sequence-Dependent Setup Times, IV ALIO/EURO Workshop on Applied Combinatorial Optimization, Pucón, Chile, November 2002.

Clark A. R., “Optimization Approximations for Capacity Constrained Material Requirements Planning Problems”, University of São Paulo, Brazil, August 2002;

Staggemeier A. T., Clark A. R., Aickelin U. and Smith J., A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm to solve a Lot Sizing and Scheduling Problem, presented at the 16th Triennual Conference of the International Federation of Operational Societies, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 2002.

Staggemeier A. T. and Clark A. R., A Survey of Lot Sizing and Scheduling Models, presented at the 33rd Annual Symposium of the Brazilian Operational Research Society (SOBRAPO), Campos do Jordão SP, Brazil, November 2001.

Clark A. R., A Model and Approximate Solution Approaches for Canning Line Scheduling, Proceedings of IV SIMPOI/POMS 2001, Guarujá SP, Brazil., August 2001.

Clark A. R. and Clark S. J., Rolling-horizon Lot-sizing when Setup Times are Sequence-dependent, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 38, issue 10, pp 2287-2308, July 2000.

Clark A. R., A Local Search Approach to Lot Sizing and Sequencing,  in (eds. Mario Tucci & Marco Garetti), Proceedings of the Third International Workshop of the IFIP WG5.7 Special Interest Group on Advanced Techniques in Production Planning & Control, 24-25 February 2000, Florence, Italy, published by Firenze University Press, 2002, ISBN 88-8453-0042-3.

Clark A. R. and da Silva Campos D., Do the Right Thing - When clients aren’t clear about what they want, OR Insight, vol. 11, issue 2, pp 24-27, April-June 1998.

Clark A. R., Batch Sequencing and Sizing with Regular Varying Demand, Production Planning and Control, vol. 9, no.3, pp 260-266, 1998.

Clark A. R., An Optimising Model for Supply Chain Management, in (eds. Binder Z., Hirsch B.E. and Aguilera L.M.), Proceedings of 1997 IFAC/IFIP Conference on Management and Control of Production and Logistics (MCPL’97), IFAC Publications, Elsevier Science Ltd, Oxford, 1998.

França P. M., Armentano V. A., Berretta R. E., and Clark A. R., A Heuristic Method for Lot-Sizing in Multi-Stage Systems, Computers and Operations Research, vol. 24, no. 9, pp 861-874, 1997.

Clark A. R., A Model for Optimising the Master Production Schedule in MRP Systems, in (eds. Sullivan W.G. and Ahmed M.M.), Proceedings of FAIM 97 - 7th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, pp 92-101, Begell House Publishers, New York, 1997, ISBN 1-56700-089-4

Clark A. R., A Service-Oriented Heuristic for Batch Sizing and Sequencing on Parallel Machines, in (eds. Kobbacy K., Vadera S. and Proudlove N.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Intelligent Management Systems in Operations, European Operations Management Association and the Operational Research Society, University of Salford, UK, March 1997.

Clark A. R. and Armentano V. A., A Heuristic for Capacitated Multi-Stage Lot-Sizing with Lead Times, Journal of the Operational Research Society, vol. 46, issue 10, pp 1208-1222, October 1995.

Clark A. R. and Armentano V. A., The Application of Valid Inequalities to the Multi-Stage Lot-Sizing Problem, Computers and Operations Research, vol. 22, no. 7, pp 669-680, 1995.

A. R. Clark, V. A. Armentano and A. de Carvalho, "Heurísticas para Dimensionamento de Lotes em Sistemas de Produção Multi-Estágios", Anais do XXV Simpósio Brasileiro de Pesquisa Operacional, Operational Research Society of Brazil), 1993.

Clark A. R. and Armentano V. A., Echelon Stock Formulations for Multi-Stage Lot-Sizing with Lead Times, International Journal of Systems Science, vol. 24, no. 9, pp 1759-1775, 1993.

Clark A. R. and Armentano V. A., Accelerated Solutions to the Multi-Stage Lot-Sizing Problem with Lead Times though the Use of Strong Valid Inequalities, Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Decision and Control, pp 1595-1599, IEEE, December 1990.

Clark A. R. and Armentano V. A., Optimal Solutions for the Lot-Sizing Problem in Multi-Stage Assembly Systems, Controle e Automação, vol. 2, issue 4, pp 214-220, Sept/Oct 1990.

Clark A. R. and Armentano V. A., Um Modelo Agregado para o Planejamento de Médio Prazo em Sistemas de Montagem com Capacidade de Produção Finita (An Aggregate Model for Medium Term Planning in Assembly Systems with Finite Production Capacity), Anais do VIII Encontro Nacional de Engenharia de Produção, pp 465-470, São Carlos Engineering School, University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1988.

Knowledge Exchange

Mathematical scheduling of student staffing shifts on our Faculty´s IT Help-desk in collaboration with Liz Gowing, Help Desk Coordinator, 2006-2007, with ongoing support.

Co-Investigator, Evaluation of Heuristic Approaches to Statistical Disclosure Control, funded by the Office for National Statistics, 2006, UK.

Selling, management, execution, and final delivery of a consulting project on the planning and scheduling of a canning line, September to December 2000, providing inspiration for the following publication: Clark A. R., Hybrid Heuristics for Planning Lot Sizes and Setups, Computers and Industrial Engineering, vol. 45, issue 4, pp 545-562, December 2003

Interesting Links

The Operational Research Society Association of European Operational Research Societies

Cap-Gemini Operational Research Web Pages UK Government Operation Research Service

INFORMS OR/MS Resource Collection Brazilian Operational Research Society