Process Mining In Action

This book describes process mining use cases and business impact along the value chain, from corporate to local applications, representing the state of the art in domain know-how. Providing a set of industrial case studies and best practices, it complements academic publications on the topic. Further the book reveals the challenges and failures in order to offer readers practical insights and guidance on how to avoid the pitfalls and ensure successful operational deployment. The book is divided into three parts: Part I provides an introduction to the topic from fundamental principles to key success factors, and an overview of operational use cases. As a holistic description of process mining in a business environment, this part is particularly useful for readers not yet familiar with the topic. Part II presents detailed use cases written by contributors from a variety of functions and industries. Lastly, Part III provides a brief overview of the future of process mining, both from academic and operational perspectives. Based on a solid academic foundation, process mining has received increasing interest from operational businesses, with many companies already reaping the benefits. As the first book to present an overview of successful industrial applications, it is of particular interest to professionals who want to learn more about the possibilities and opportunities this new technology offers. It is also a valuable resource for researchers looking for empirical results when considering requirements for enhancements and further developments.

This is the second edition of Wil van der Aalst’s seminal book on process mining, which now discusses the field also in the broader context of data science and big data approaches. It includes several additions and updates, e.g. on inductive mining techniques, the notion of alignments, a considerably expanded section on software tools and a completely new chapter of process mining in the large. It is self-contained, while at the same time covering the entire process-mining spectrum from process discovery to predictive analytics. After a general introduction to data science and process mining in Part I, Part II provides the basics of business process modeling and data mining necessary to understand the remainder of the book. Next, Part III focuses on process discovery as the most important process mining task, while Part IV moves beyond discovering the control flow of processes, highlighting conformance checking, and organizational and time perspectives. Part V offers a guide to successfully applying process mining in practice, including an introduction to the widely used open-source tool ProM and several commercial products. Lastly, Part VI takes a step back, reflecting on the material presented and the key open challenges. Overall, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in process mining. It is intended for business process analysts, business consultants, process managers, graduate students, and BPM researchers.

More and more information about business processes is recorded by information systems in the form of so-called “event logs”. Despite the omnipresence of such data, most organizations diagnose problems based on fiction rather than facts. Process mining is an emerging discipline based on process model-driven approaches and data mining. It not only allows organizations to fully benefit from the information stored in their systems, but it can also be used to check the conformance of processes, detect bottlenecks, and predict execution problems. Wil van der Aalst delivers the first book on process mining. It aims to be self-contained while covering the entire process mining spectrum from process discovery to operational support. In Part I, the author provides the basics of business process modeling and data mining necessary to understand the remainder of the book. Part II focuses on process discovery as the most important process mining task. Part III moves beyond discovering the control flow of processes and highlights conformance checking, and organizational and time perspectives. Part IV guides the reader in successfully applying process mining in practice, including an introduction to the widely used open-source tool ProM. Finally, Part V takes a step back, reflecting on the material presented and the key open challenges. Overall, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in process mining. It is intended for business process analysts, business consultants, process managers, graduate students, and BPM researchers.

What are the possibilities for process mining in hospitals? In this book the authors provide an answer to this question by presenting a healthcare reference model that outlines all the different classes of data that are potentially available for process mining in healthcare and the relationships between them. Subsequently, based on this reference model, they explain the application opportunities for process mining in this domain and discuss the various kinds of analyses that can be performed. They focus on organizational healthcare processes rather than medical treatment processes. The combination of event data and process mining techniques allows them to analyze the operational processes within a hospital based on facts, thus providing a solid basis for managing and improving processes within hospitals. To this end, they also explicitly elaborate on data quality issues that are relevant for the data aspects of the healthcare reference model. This book mainly targets advanced professionals involved in areas related to business process management, business intelligence, data mining, and business process redesign for healthcare systems as well as graduate students specializing in healthcare information systems and process analysis.

This book provides a practically applicable guide to the methodologies and technologies for the application of interactive process mining paradigm. Case studies are presented where this paradigm has been successfully applied in emergency medicine, surgery processes, human behavior modelling, strokes and outpatients’ services, enabling the reader to develop a deep understanding of how to apply process mining technologies in healthcare to support them in inferring new knowledge from past actions, and providing accurate and personalized knowledge to improve their future clinical decision-making. Interactive Process Mining in Healthcare comprehensively covers how machine learning algorithms can be utilized to create real scientific evidence to improve daily healthcare protocols, and is a valuable resource for a variety of health professionals seeking to develop new methods to improve their clinical decision-making.

This book introduces readers to the field of conformance checking as a whole and outlines the fundamental relation between modelled and recorded behaviour. Conformance checking interrelates the modelled and recorded behaviour of a given process and provides techniques and methods for comparing and analysing observed instances of a process in the presence of a model, independent of the model’s origin. Its goal is to provide an overview of the essential techniques and methods in this field at an intuitive level, together with precise formalisations of its underlying principles. The book is divided into three parts, that are meant to cover different perspectives of the field of conformance checking. Part I presents a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the essential concepts used to interrelate modelled and recorded behaviour. It also serves as a reference for assessing how conformance checking efforts could be applied in specific domains. Next, Part II provides readers with detailed insights into algorithms for conformance checking, including the most commonly used formal notions and their instantiation for specific analysis questions. Lastly, Part III highlights applications that help to make sense of conformance checking results, thereby providing a necessary next step to increase the value of a given process model. They help to interpret the outcomes of conformance checking and incorporate them by means of enhancement and repair techniques. Providing the core building blocks of conformance checking and describing its main applications, this book mainly addresses students specializing in business process management, researchers entering process mining and conformance checking for the first time, and advanced professionals whose work involves process evaluation, modelling and optimization.

This book provides operational guidance on how to bring process mining to the next level, with process intelligence enabling companies to improve process efficiency and realize value. Written by practitioners, it combines the editor’s 10-year experience in this field gained at Celonis and Siemens, with 12 best practice use cases from international companies representing multiple industries and domains. Part I sets the stage describing the evolution from process mining to process intelligence. The chapters guide the reader step by step, from getting started to driving adoption at scale. Success factors critical for digital transformations and a detailed path to value realization are presented. Best practices on operating models and Centers of Excellence (CoEs) are shared as accelerators for successful digital transformations. Part II presents 12 use cases written by transformation- and CoE leaders who have achieved significant impact and value with process intelligence in their respective organization. All use cases have been written independent from any particular software, with a focus on evangelizing the topic and showcasing how companies like ABB, BMW, Bosch, Merck, PepsiCo, Saint Gobin, Siemens, and others leverage the capability to drive value. Part III provides an outlook on the future of process intelligence from an academic and an operational perspective, with a special focus on the disruptive impact of GenAI with future scenarios, challenges and recommendations. The book is written by practitioners for practitioners. Readers may have responsibilities as senior executives, transformation leaders, process managers and experts, consultants, change evangelists, etc. The book provides operational, hands-on tips on how to accelerate process transformation in organizations by detailing best practices as well as possible pitfalls.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to workflow management, the management of business processes with information technology. By defining, analyzing, and redesigning an organization's resources and operations, workflow management systems ensure that the right information reaches the right person or computer application at the right time. The book provides a basic overview of workflow terminology and organization, as well as detailed coverage of workflow modeling with Petri nets. Because Petri nets make definitions easier to understand for nonexperts, they facilitate communication between designers and users. The book includes a chapter of case studies, review exercises, and a glossary. A special Web site developed by the authors, www.workflowcourse.com, features animation, interactive examples, lecture materials, exercises and solutions, relevant links, and other valuable resources for the classroom.