Improving process models by mining mappings of low-level events to high-level activities

While it is possible to analyze the run-time behavior of a business process through process mining techniques, in practice there is often a gap between the low-level nature of the events recorded in an event log and the high-level of abstraction at which the process is modeled. This makes it difficult to understand the recorded behavior in terms of the high-level activities in the process model. Also, it makes it difficult to improve the model based on run-time data about the process. In this work we present an approach to mine mappings between the events in the log and the activities in the model. These mappings can be used to generate suggestions of how the process model can be extended in order to capture the behavior recorded in the event log. Using a real-world and publicly available event log, we show how the approach can improve the model in a stepwise manner, until it covers all the behavior recorded in the event log.

[1]  Luigi Pontieri,et al.  Mining Hierarchies of Models: From Abstract Views to Concrete Specifications , 2005, Business Process Management.

[2]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Replaying history on process models for conformance checking and performance analysis , 2012, WIREs Data Mining Knowl. Discov..

[3]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Activity Mining by Global Trace Segmentation , 2009, Business Process Management Workshops.

[4]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Supporting Flexible Processes through Recommendations Based on History , 2008, BPM.

[5]  Hajo A. Reijers,et al.  Product based workflow support : a recommendation service for dynamic workflow execution , 2008 .

[6]  Vojtech Huser,et al.  Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes , 2012, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[7]  Wil M.P. van der Aalst,et al.  Genetic Process Mining , 2005, ICATPN.

[8]  Hajo A. Reijers,et al.  Advanced Social Features in a Recommendation System for Process Modeling , 2009, BIS.

[9]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Workflow mining: discovering process models from event logs , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[10]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Application of Process Mining in Healthcare - A Case Study in a Dutch Hospital , 2008, BIOSTEC.

[11]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Data-aware process mining: discovering decisions in processes using alignments , 2013, SAC '13.

[12]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  The Application of Petri Nets to Workflow Management , 1998, J. Circuits Syst. Comput..

[13]  W.M.P. van der Aalst,et al.  Supporting Flexible Processes Through Log-Based Recommendations , 2008, BPM 2008.

[14]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Data- and Resource-Aware Conformance Checking of Business Processes , 2012, BIS.

[15]  Mark von Rosing,et al.  Business Process Model and Notation - BPMN , 2015, The Complete Business Process Handbook, Vol. I.

[16]  August-Wilhelm Scheer,et al.  ARIS - Business Process Modeling , 1998 .

[17]  Célia Ghedini Ralha,et al.  Mining the low-level behaviour of agents in high-level business processes , 2013, Int. J. Bus. Process. Integr. Manag..

[18]  Ivo Vondrák,et al.  Business Process Modeling , 2007, Encyclopedia of Database Systems.

[19]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Aligning Event Logs and Process Models for Multi-perspective Conformance Checking: An Approach Based on Integer Linear Programming , 2013, BPM.

[20]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Process mining: a research agenda , 2004, Comput. Ind..

[21]  Wil M.P. van der Aalst,et al.  Process mining with the HeuristicsMiner algorithm , 2006 .

[22]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Process Mining - Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes , 2011 .

[23]  Célia Ghedini Ralha,et al.  A Hierarchical Markov Model to Understand the Behaviour of Agents in Business Processes , 2012, Business Process Management Workshops.

[24]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Genetic process mining: an experimental evaluation , 2007, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

[25]  Andreas Oberweis,et al.  Recommendation-based editor for business process modeling , 2011, Data Knowl. Eng..

[26]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Discovering Hierarchical Process Models Using ProM , 2011, CAiSE Forum.

[27]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Aligning Event Logs and Declarative Process Models for Conformance Checking , 2012, BPM.

[28]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Conformance checking of processes based on monitoring real behavior , 2008, Inf. Syst..

[29]  Agnes Koschmider,et al.  Recommendation Based Process Modeling Support: Method and User Experience , 2008, ER.

[30]  Gerd Wagner,et al.  Improving Business Process Models with Agent-Based Simulation and Process Mining , 2013, BMMDS/EMMSAD.

[31]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst.  Process mining , 2012, CACM.

[32]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Fuzzy Mining - Adaptive Process Simplification Based on Multi-perspective Metrics , 2007, BPM.