Process mining of test processes : a case study

Process mining techniques attempt to extract non-trivial and useful information from event logs. For example, there are many process mining techniques to automatically discover a process model describing the causal dependencies between activities. Moreover, using conformance checking it is possible to investigate and quantify deviations between the real process and the modeled process. Several successful case studies have been reported in literature, all demonstrating the applicability of process mining. However, these case studies refer to rather structured administrative processes. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of process mining to less structured processes. We report on a case study where the ProM framework has been applied to the test processes of ASML (the leading manufacturer of wafer scanners in the world). This case study provides many interesting insights. On the one hand, process mining is also applicable to the less structured processes of ASML. On the other hand, the case study also shows the need for alternative mining approaches able to better visualize processes and provide more insights.

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