Maksud Ibrahimov Maksud is a digital leader, McKinsey/QuantumBlack consultant (however articles here are my personal views and may not represent views of McKinsey/QuantumBlack), who combines technology, AI, product, and consulting business skills by delivering with interdisciplinary teams with immense focus on business value. Maksud leads projects from the use case prioritisation, to PoC, to pilot, to full project and integration with business and technical processes.

Maksud brings over 15 years of hands on and leadership experience in machine learning, digital twin simulations, decision support systems, optimisation, and software engineering. He is a founder of one of the first Australian data science consultancies, Adaptic Solutions, which, after acquisition with Arq, has grown under his leadership, from zero to over 3 million in revenue. He is highly experienced in planning, scheduling, logistics, utilities, and customer analytics. Maksud is a frequent speaker at the meetups, conferences, and universities. He is also a bronze medal winner of International Olympiad in Informatics, world wide computer science contenst, in Athens, in 2004.

Below is a brief overview of Maksud’s experince, skills and competencies. To find out more about Maksud’s experience, you can visit his LinkedIn page

Experience

McKinsey&Company/QuantumBlack: April 2018 – present

Principal data scientist – I lead large international Advanced Analytics (AA) projects from initial opportunity assessment to development of machine learning / optimisation models, building client team AA capabilities, and final deployment. I led several product initiatives globally. Created and scaled AA meetup from Australia to APAC.

Arq Group / Infoready (merged) / Adaptic (merged): March 2014 – March 2018

Chief data scientist – Led AA practice holistically, including P&L, sales, delivery, capability building, team, product development. I grew team to 25 people and $3M in revenue. Clients included Telstra, NAB, AusPost, AusNet, Newcrest

ABB Enterprise Software: February 2013 – March 2014

Product owner of scheduling and logistics offering globally – led global team of 7, on development of AA capabilities across ABB mining suite. Conceptualised and developed AA and integration capability for 5 of the suite products.

Schneider Electric: Aug 2008 – Feb 2013 Senior Scientist – Led development of planning and scheduling engine, demand planner and logistics engine. Led teams of 2-5 people. Clients included Rio, BHP, Fosters Group, Viterra, Xtrata, Incitec Pivot

Key skills and competencies

Technical skills Machine learning, products and innovation, digital twins, optimisation, software and data engineering, MLOps, data storytelling, analytics translation
Digital leadership People leadership. Track record of building and developing high performance agile multi-discipline teams, including data scientists, data/software/frontend engineers, designers, business, etc
Analytics translation. Translate business requirements for technical teams’ delivery
Stakeholder management. I bring trust-based relationships, clear alignment comms and prioritisation
Entrepreneurship. Built businesses from scratch to over $3M, scaled products and meetups globally
Problem solving. Takling a complex problem by structuring it, breaking it down and synthesising a simpler solution to implement and explain
Thought leadership. Frequent speaker at universities, meetups and conferences and using and pushing cutting edge trends
Tools and infrastructure Analytics: Python data science libraries, Tableau, SQL and NoSQL databases
Software development: Python, R, Scala, Java, C/C++, C#
Cloud and infra: AWS, Azure; Docker, infra as code, CI/CD, MLOps
Industries Customer analytics, telecommunications, utilities, mining and metals, logistics, retail, supply chain, public sector

Education

PhD in computer and mathematical sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia, 2008 - 2012

Topic: Evolutionary algorithms for supply chain optimisation

BSc, MSc Baku State University, 2007 - 2008

Applied mathematics and computer science

Community building - meetups

Maksud founded and led multiple advanced analytics meetups in Australia and APAC:

  • Advanced Analytics Beautifully Engineered, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Tokyo
  • Oz Big Data, Melbourne

Science publications

Maksud is an author of multiple scientific and non-scientific publications. Some of them include:

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Scheduling in Iron Ore Open Pit Mining. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 2012

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Evolutionary Approaches for Supply Chain Optimisation. Part I: Single and Two-component Supply Chains. International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics, volume 5, issue 4, 2012

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Evolutionary Approaches for Supply Chain Optimisation. Part II: Multi-silo Supply Chains. International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics, volume 5, issue 4, 2012

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Maris Ozols, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Advanced Planning in Vertically Integrated Wine Supply Chains. In Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Optimization Problems, in Shengxiang Yang and Xin Yao (Editors), Springer, series on Studies in Computational Intelligence, 2012, pp 125-148

  • Arvind Mohais, Maksud Ibrahimov, Sven Schellenberg, Neal Wagner, Zbigniew MichalewiczAn Evolutionary Approach to Practical Constraints in Scheduling: A Case-Study of the Wine Bottling Problem. In Chiong, R., Weise, Th., and Michalewicz, Z. (Editors), Variants of Evolutionary Algorithms for Real-World Applications, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2012 pp 31-58

  • Sven Schellenberg, Arvind Mohais, Maksud Ibrahimov, Neal Wagner, Zbigniew Michalewicz A Fuzzy-Evolutionary Approach to the Problem of Optimisation and Decision- Support in Supply Chain Networks. In Chiong, R., Weise, Th., and Michalewicz, Z. (Editors), Variants of Evolutionary Algorithms for Real-World Applications, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2012, pp 143-166

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Comparison of Cooperative, Multiobjective Cooperative and Classical Evolutionary Algorithms for Global Supply Chain Optimisation. In Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Dublin, Ireland, July 12-16, 2011 1.5. PUBLICATIONS 27

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Comparison of Different Evolutionary Algorithms for Global Supply Chain Optimisation and Parameter Analysis. In Proceedings of 2011 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, New Orleans, June 5-8, 2011, pp 2407-2414

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Advanced planning in vertically integrated supply chains. In Intelligent Decision Systems in Large-Scale Distributed Environments, P. Bouvry, H. Gonzlez-Vlez, and J. Kolodziej (Editors), Springer, Volume 362, 2011, pp 125-148

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Neal Wagner, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Comparison of multiobjective cooperative and classical evolutionary algorithms for global supply chain optimisation. In Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Operation Research, Lisbon, Portugal, 11-14 July 2010, pp 121-122

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Neal Wagner, Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Zbigniew Michalewicz Comparison of cooperative and classical evolutionary algorithms for global supply chain optimisation. In Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Barcelona, Spain, 18-23 July 2010, pp 1-8

  • Arvind Mohais, Sven Schellenberg, Maksud Ibrahimov, Neal Wagner, Zbigniew Michalewicz Time-Varying Constraints and Other Practical Problems in Real-World Scheduling Applications. In Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Barcelona, Spain, 18-23 July 2010, pp 1-8

  • Sven Schellenberg, Arvind Mohais, Maksud Ibrahimov, Neal Wagner and Zbigniew Michalewicz Optimising supply chain networks by means of a hybridised simulation based approach. In Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Barcelona, Spain, 18-23 July 2010, pp 1-6

  • Zbigniew Michalewicz, Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais Applications of Evolutionary Methods for Complex Industrial Problems. In Proceedings of EUROGEN’09, T. Burczynski and J. Periaux (Eds), 2009, pp 1-6 28 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

  • Maksud Ibrahimov, Arvind Mohais, Zbigniew Michalewicz Global optimization in supply chain operations chapter. In Raymond Chiong and Sandeep Dhakal (Editors), Natural Intelligence for Scheduling, Planning and Packing problems, Springer, 2009, pp 1-28

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This article reflects my personal views and opinions only, which may be different from the companies and employers that I am associated with.