Analysis of the Volvo IT Incident and Problem Handling Processes using Process Mining and Social Network Analysis

Volvo IT Belgium has provided real-life datasets for the need of the Third International Business Process Intelligence Challenge, in the form of event logs generated by the VINST system used across the Volvo corporation to support incident and problem handling. Volvo has also pointed 4 aspects of their business operations they would like to be scrutinized. 1) Are the incidents contained within the 1st support line? 2) Is bouncing delegation, a.k.a. ping-pong, a frequent phenomenon? 3) Are employees cheating on VINST by faking inexistent waits from endusers? 4) Are real process instances conform with the process model proposed by Volvo IT? In this paper, we provide answers to all these questions using process mining and social network analysis techniques, and we state the existence of hidden support lines degrading the overall performance of incident handling, little localized ping-pong behavior and wait-user misuse, and various levels of conformity across organizations.