Replaying history on process models for conformance checking and performance analysis

Focus Article

Wil van der Aalst, Arya Adriansyah, Boudewijn van Dongen

Published Online: Jan 30 2012

DOI: 10.1002/widm.1045

Full article on Wiley Online Library: HTML PDF

Can't access this content? Tell your librarian.

Process mining techniques use event data to discover process models, to check the conformance of predefined process models, and to extend such models with information about bottlenecks, decisions, and resource usage. These techniques are driven by observed events rather than hand‐made models. Event logs are used to learn and enrich process models. By replaying history using the model, it is possible to establish a precise relationship between events and model elements. This relationship can be used to check conformance and to analyze performance. For example, it is possible to diagnose deviations from the modeled behavior. The severity of each deviation can be quantified. Moreover, the relationship established during replay and the timestamps in the event log can be combined to show bottlenecks. These examples illustrate the importance of maintaining a proper alignment between event log and process model. Therefore, we elaborate on the realization of such alignments and their application to conformance checking and performance analysis. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article is categorized under:

Algorithmic Development > Association Rules
Algorithmic Development > Spatial and Temporal Data Mining
Application Areas > Business and Industry
Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Data Concepts

Figure 1.

One event log L (right) and four process models M₁, M₂, M₃, and M₄ (left).

[ Normal View | Magnified View ]

References

van der Aalst, WMP. Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business Processes.Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2011.
van der Aalst, WMP,Weijters, AJMM,Maruster, L.Workflow mining: discovering process models from event logs.IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng2004, 16:1128–1142.
Rozinat, A,van der Aalst, WMP.Conformance checking of processes based on monitoring real behavior.Inf Syst, 33:64–95,2008.
Hand, D,Mannila, H,Smyth, P.Principles of Data Mining.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press;2001.
Weske, M.Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures.Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2007.
IEEE Task Force on Process Mining.Process mining manifesto. In:BPM Workshops. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Vol. 99.Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2011.
ter Hofstede, AHM,van der Aalst, WMP,Adams, M,Russell, N.Modern Business Process Automation: YAWL and Its Support Environment.Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2010.
Adriansyah, A,van Dongen, BF,van der Aalst, WMP.Towards robust conformance checking. In:zur Muehlen, M,Su, J, eds.BPM 2010 Workshops, Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Business Process Intelligence (BPI2010). Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Vol. 66. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2011,122–133.
Adriansyah, A,van Dongen, B,van der Aalst, WMP.Conformance checking using cost‐based fitness analysis. In:IEEE International Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC 2011).Helsinki, Finland: IEEE Computer Society;2011.
Munoz‐Gama, J,Carmona, J.A fresh look at precision in process conformance. In:Hull, R,Mendling, J,Tai, S, eds.Business Process Management (BPM 2010). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6336.Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2010,211–226.
Munoz‐Gama, J,Adriansyah, A,Carmona, J,van Dongen, BF, andvan der Aalst, WMP.Alignment Based Precision Checking in Process Mining.Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Eindhoven University of Technology;2011.
Munoz‐Gama, J,Carmona, J.Enhancing precision in process conformance: stability, confidence and severity. In:Chawla, N,King, I,Sperduti, A, eds.IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining (CIDM 2011).Paris: IEEE; April2011.
Boender, C,Rinnooy, K.A Bayesian analysis of the number of cells of a multinomial distribution.Statistician, 32:240–248,1983.
Mendling, J,Neumann, G,van der Aalst, WMP.Understanding the occurrence of errors in process models based on metrics. In:Curbera, F,Leymann, F,Weske, M, eds.Proceedings of the OTM Conference on Cooperative information Systems (CoopIS 2007).Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4803. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2007,113–130.
Cook, JE,He, C,Ma, C.Measuring behavioral correspondence to a timed concurrent model. In:Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Software Mainenance.Florence, Italy: IEEE;2001,332–341.
Cook, JE,Wolf, AL.Software process validation: quantitatively measuring the correspondence of a process to a model.ACM Trans Soft Eng Methodol, 8:147–176,1999.
Alves de Medeiros, AK,Weijters, AJMM,van der Aalst, WMP.Genetic process mining: an experimental evaluation.Data Min Knowl Discovery, 14:245–304,2007.
Rozinat, A,Alves de Medeiros, AK,Günther, CW,Weijters, AJMM,van der Aalst, WMP.The need for a process mining evaluation framework in research and practice. In:ter Hofstede, A,Benatallah, B,Paik, HY, eds.BPM 2007 International Workshops (BPI, BPD, CBP, ProHealth, RefMod, Semantics4ws). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4928. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2008,84–89.
De Weerdt, J,De Backer, M,Vanthienen, J,Baesens, B.A critical evaluation of model‐log metrics in process discovery. In:zur Muehlen, M,Su, J, eds.BPM 2010 Workshops, Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Business Process Intelligence (BPI2010). Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Vol. 66. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2011,158–169.
Goedertier, S,Martens, D,Vanthienen, J,Baesens, B.Robust process discovery with artificial negative events.J Mach Learn Res, 10:1305–1340,2009.
De Weerdt, J,De Backer, M,Vanthienen, J,Baesens, B.A robust F‐measure for evaluating discovered process models. In:Chawla, N,King, I,Sperduti, A, eds.IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining (CIDM 2011), pages148–155, Paris: IEEE; April2011.
Greco, G,Guzzo, A,Pontieri, L,Saccà, .Discovering expressive process models by clustering log traces.IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng, 18:1010–1027,2006.
Fahland, D,Leoni, M,van Dongen, BF, andvan der Aalst, WMP.Conformance checking of interacting processes with overlapping instances. In:Rinderle, S,Toumani, F,Wolf, K, eds.Business Process Management (BPM 2011). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6896. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2011,345–361.
Weidlich, M,Polyvyanyy, A,Desai, N,Mendling, J,Weske, M.Process compliance measurement based on behavioral profiles.Inf Syst, 36:1009–1025,2011.
Elgammal, A,Turetken, O,van den Heuvel, W, andPapazoglou, M.Root‐cause analysis of design‐time compliance violations on the basis of property patterns. In:Maglio, P,Weske, M,Yang, J,Fantinato, M, eds.Proceedings of Service‐Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2010). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6470. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2010,17–31.
Governatori, G,Hoffmann, J,Sadiq, S,Weber, I.Detecting regulatory compliance for business process models through semantic annotations. In:Fourth International Workshop on Business Process Design. LNBIP 17.Milano, Italy: Springer‐Verlag, 5–17;2008, DOI: 10.1007/978‐3‐642‐00328‐8.
Governatori, G,Milosevic, Z,Sadiq, S.Compliance checking between business processes and business contracts. In:Tenth International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2006).Hong Kong: IEEE Computing Society;2006,221–232.
Lohmann, N.Compliance by design for artifact‐centric business processes. In:Rinderle, S,Toumani, F,Wolf, K, eds.Business Process Management (BPM 2011). volume 6896 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6896. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2011,99–115.
van der Aalst, WMP,Pesic, M,Song, M.Beyond process mining: from the past to present and future. In:Pernici, B, ed.Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE`10). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6051.Berlin: Springer‐Verlag;2010,38–52.
van der Aalst, WMP,Schonenberg, MH,Song, M.Time prediction based on process mining.Inf Syst2011, 36:450–475.
Verbeek, HMW,Buijs, JCAM,van Dongen, BF,van der Aalst, WMP.ProM 6: The process mining toolkit. In:Rosa, ML, ed.Proceedings of BPM Demonstration Track 2010. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Vol. 615.Hoboken, NJ: CEUR (http://ceur‐ws.org/);2010,34–39.

Access to this WIREs title is by subscription only.

Recommend to Your
Librarian Now!

Replaying history on process models for conformance checking and performance analysis

Browse by Topic

Access to this WIREs title is by subscription only.

The latest WIREs articles in your inbox