scholarly journals Discovering Block–Structured Parallel Process Models from Causally Complete Event Logs

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julijana Lekić ◽  
Dragan Milićev
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Modified Method ◽  
Event Logs ◽  
Event Log ◽  
Partial Correction ◽  
Modified Algorithm ◽  
Block Structured

Abstract α-algorithm is suitable to discover a large class of workflow (WF) nets based on the behaviour recorded in event logs, with the main limiting assumption that the event log is complete. Our research has been aimed at finding ways of discovering business process models based on examples of traces, ie, logs of workflow actions that do not meet the requirement of completeness. In this aim, we have modified the existing and introduced a new relation between activities recorded in the event log, which has led to a partial correction of the process models discovering technique, including the α-algorithm. We have also introduced the notion of causally complete logs, from which our modified algorithm can produce the same result as the α-algorithm from complete logs. The effect of these modifications on the efficiency of the process model discovering is mostly evident for business processes in which many activities can be performed in parallel. The application of the modified method for discovering block-structured models of parallel business processes is presented in this paper.

scholarly journals Business processes exceptions in relation to operational performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 908-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Dijkman ◽  
Oktay Turetken ◽  
Geoffrey Robert van IJzendoorn ◽  
Meint de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Operational Performance ◽  
Normal Flow ◽  
Throughput Time ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose Business process models describe the way of working in an organization. Typically, business process models distinguish between the normal flow of work and exceptions to that normal flow. However, they often present an idealized view. This means that unexpected exceptions – exceptions that are not modeled in the business process model – can also occur in practice. This has an effect on the efficiency of the organization, because information systems are not developed to handle unexpected exceptions. The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between the occurrence of exceptions and operational performance. Design/methodology/approach The paper does this by analyzing the execution logs of business processes from five organizations, classifying execution paths as normal or exceptional. Subsequently, it analyzes the differences between normal and exceptional paths. Findings The results show that exceptions are related to worse operational performance in terms of a longer throughput time and that unexpected exceptions relate to a stronger increase in throughput time than expected exceptions. Practical implications These findings lead to practical implications on policies that can be followed with respect to exceptions. Most importantly, unexpected exceptions should be avoided by incorporating them into the process – and thus transforming them into expected exceptions – as much as possible. Also, as not all exceptions lead to longer throughput times, continuous improvement should be employed to continuously monitor the occurrence of exceptions and make decisions on their desirability in the process. Originality/value While work exists on analyzing the occurrence of exceptions in business processes, especially in the context of process conformance analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first work that analyzes the possible consequences of such exceptions.

scholarly journals Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Castela ◽  
Paulo Dias ◽  
Marielba Zacarias ◽  
José Tribolet
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Organizational Environment ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Over Time

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.

scholarly journals Towards Aspects Identification in Business Process Through Process Mining

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruna Brandão ◽  
Flávia Santoro ◽  
Leonardo Azevedo
Keyword(s):  
Programming Languages ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Mining ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Crosscutting Concerns ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Event Logs ◽  
Initial Results

In business process models, elements can be scattered (repeated) within different processes, making it difficult to handle changes, analyze process for improvements, or check crosscutting impacts. These scattered elements are named as Aspects. Similar to the aspect-oriented paradigm in programming languages, in BPM, aspect handling has the goal to modularize the crosscutting concerns spread across the models. This process modularization facilitates the management of the process (reuse, maintenance and understanding). The current approaches for aspect identification are made manually; thus, resulting in the problem of subjectivity and lack of systematization. This paper proposes a method to automatically identify aspects in business process from its event logs. The method is based on mining techniques and it aims to solve the problem of the subjectivity identification made by specialists. The initial results from a preliminary evaluation showed evidences that the method identified correctly the aspects present in the process model.

scholarly journals Aggregate Metric Model for Evaluating Business Processes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Chika Eleonu
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Modelling ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Modelling ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Measurement Framework ◽  
Aggregate Measure ◽  
Modelling Approaches

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a business process measurement framework for the evaluation of a corpus of business processes modelled in different business process modelling approaches. The results of the application of the proposed measurement framework will serve as a basis for choosing business process modelling approaches. Design/methodology/approach - The approach uses ideas of the Goal Question Metric (GQM) framework to define metrics for measuring a business process where the metrics answer the questions to achieve the goal. The Weighted Sum Method (WSM) is used to aggregate the measure of attributes of a business process to derive an aggregate measure, and business process modelling approaches are compared based on the evaluation of business process models created in different business process modelling approaches using the aggregate measure. Findings - The proposed measurement framework was applied to a corpus of business process models in different business process modelling approaches and is showed that insight is gained into the effect of business process modelling approach on the maintainability of a business process model. From the results, business process modelling approaches which imbibed the principle of separation of concerns of models, make use of reference or base model for a family of business process variants and promote the reuse of model elements performed highest when their models are evaluated with the proposed measurement framework. The results showed that the applications of the proposed framework proved to be useful for the selection of business process modelling approaches. Originality - The novelty of this work is in the application of WSM to integrate metric of business process models and the evaluation of a corpus of business process models created in different business process modelling approaches using the aggregate measure.

Viewpoints on Business Process Models

2018 ◽  
pp. 788-798
Author(s):  
Giorgio Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Operational Activities

Over the past few years a number of viewpoints have influenced the design of notations for business processes. They emphasize the different elements (tasks, business entities and roles) that compose business process models; for this reason, they are referred to as activity-centric, data-centric, and role-centric viewpoints. The activity-centric viewpoint focuses on the orchestration of operational activities, which encompass human tasks and automatic ones. On the contrary, the data-centric viewpoint stresses the identification of the key business entities and their life cycles consisting of states and transitions. In the role-centric viewpoint, a process model is made up of several “role” models; each role model provides a restricted view of the process limited to the behavior of the role under consideration. This article illustrates how the above-mentioned viewpoints can be extracted from a global model, with the help of an example concerning the submission of papers to conferences.

scholarly journals Generating Block-Structured Parallel Process Models by Demonstration

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1876
Author(s):  
Julijana Lekić ◽  
Dragan Milićev ◽  
Dragan Stanković
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Mining ◽  
Original Method ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Programming By Demonstration ◽  
Event Logs ◽  
Process Specification ◽  
Common Purpose ◽  
Block Structured

Programming by demonstration (PBD) is a technique which allows end users to create, modify, accommodate, and expand programs by demonstrating what the program is supposed to do. Although the ideal of common-purpose programming by demonstration or by examples has been rejected as practically unrealistic, this approach has found its application and shown potentials when limited to specific narrow domains and ranges of applications. In this paper, the original method of applying the principles of programming by demonstration in the area of process mining (PM) to interactive construction of block-structured parallel business processes models is presented. A technique and tool that enable interactive process mining and incremental discovery of process models have been described in this paper. The idea is based on the following principle: using a demonstrational user interface, a user demonstrates scenarios of execution of parallel business process activities, and the system gives a generalized model process specification. A modified process mining technique with the α|| algorithm applied on weakly complete event logs is used for creating parallel business process models using demonstration.

scholarly journals Detecting Branching Condition Changes in Process Models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Lu ◽  
Qifan Chen ◽  
Simon K. Poon
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Change Points ◽  
Detection Methods ◽  
Important Process ◽  
Decision Criteria ◽  
Event Logs ◽  
Simulated Event

Business processes are continuously evolving in order to adapt to changes due to various factors. One important process drift perspective yet to be investigated is the detection of branching condition changes in the process model. None of the existing process drift detection methods focus on detecting changes of branching conditions in process models. Existing branching condition detection methods do not take changes within the process into account, hence results are inadequate to represent the changes of decision criteria of the process. In this paper, we present a method which can detect branching condition changes in process models. The method takes both process models and event logs as input, and translates event logs into decision sequences for change points detection. The proposed method is evaluated by simulated event logs.

Verification of e-Commerce Business Processes

2011 ◽  
pp. 105-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Feja ◽  
Andreas Speck ◽  
Elke Pulvermüller ◽  
Marcel Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
System Development ◽  
Real System ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Formal Requirement ◽  
Different Types

Nevertheless distinctive improvements are necessary before this technology can be applied in the real system development. Graphical formal requirement notations for different kinds of process model notations as representations of the specification of rules are also crucial, along with the ability to present the positive and especially negative results to the different types of stakeholders. And finally, the model checking technique has to be improved in order to deal with different types of model elements which are typical for business process models.

Recovery and Refinement of Business Process Models for Web Applications

2018 ◽  
pp. 248-291
Author(s):  
Alessandro Marchetto ◽  
Chiara Di Francescomarino
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Web Applications ◽  
Process Mining ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Model Complexity ◽  
Model Refinement ◽  
Business Process Models

Web Applications (WAs) have been often used to expose business processes to the users. WA modernization and evolution are complex and time-consuming activities that can be supported by software documentation (e.g., process models). When, as often happens, documentation is missing or is incomplete, documentation recovery and mining represent an important opportunity for reconstructing or completing it. Existing process-mining approaches, however, tend to recover models that are quite complex, rich, and intricate, thus difficult to understand and use for analysts and developers. Model refinement approaches have been presented in the literature to reduce the model complexity and intricateness while preserving the capability of representing the relevant information. In this chapter, the authors summarize approaches to mine first and refine later business process models from existing WAs. In particular, they present two process model refinement approaches: (1) re-modularization and (2) reduction. The authors introduce the techniques and show how to apply them to WAs.

scholarly journals PARALLEL PROCESS DISCOVERY USING A NEW TIME-BASED ALPHA++ MINER

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-141
Author(s):  
Yutika Amelia Effendi ◽  
Riyanarto Sarno
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Heuristic Algorithms ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Log Data ◽  
Process Discovery ◽  
Fitness Value ◽  
Event Log ◽  
New Time

A lot of services in business processes lead information systems to build huge amounts of event logs that are difficult to observe. The event log will be analysed using a process discovery technique to mine the process model by implementing some well-known algorithms such as deterministic algorithms and heuristic algorithms. All of the algorithms have their own benefits and limitations in analysing and discovering the event log into process models. This research proposed a new Time-based Alpha++ Miner with an improvement of the Alpha++ Miner and Modified Time-based Alpha Miner algorithm. The proposed miner is able to consider noise traces, loop, and non-free choice when modelling a process model where both of original algorithms cannot override those issues. A new Time-based Alpha++ Miner utilizing Time Interval Pattern can mine the process model using new rules defined by the time interval pattern using a double-time stamp event log and define sequence and parallel (AND, OR, and XOR) relation. The original miners are only able to discover sequence and parallel (AND and XOR) relation. To know the differences between the original Alpha++ Miner and the new one including the process model and its relations, the evaluation using fitness and precision was done in this research. The results presented that the process model obtained by a new Time-based Alpha++ Miner was better than that of the original Alpha++ Miner algorithm in terms of parallel OR, handling noise, fitness value, and precision value. ABSTRAK: Banyak sistem perniagaan perkhidmatan menghasilkan sejumlah besar log data maklumat yang payah dipantau. Log data ini akan dianalisis menggunakan teknik proses penemuan bagi memperoleh model proses dengan menerapkan beberapa algoritma terkenal, seperti algoritma deterministik dan algoritma heuristik. Semua algoritma ini memiliki kehebatan dan kekurangannya dalam menganalisis dan mencari log data ke dalam model proses. Kajian ini mencadangkan Time-based Alpha++ Miner baru yang merupakan pembaharuan dari algoritma Alpha++ Miner dan Modified Time-based Alpha Miner. Algoritma baru ini dapat mempertimbangkan kesan bunyi, pusingan, dan pilihan tidak bebas ketika memodelkan model proses di mana kedua algoritma asal tidak dapat menggantikan isu tersebut. Time-based Alpha++ Miner baru mengguna pakai Pola Interval Waktu berjaya memperoleh model proses menggunakan peraturan baru berdasarkan Pola Interval Waktu menggunakan log peristiwa waktu-ganda dan menentukan jujukan dan hubungan selari (AND, OR, dan XOR). Dibandingkan algoritma asal, ia hanya dapat menemukan jujukan dan hubungan selari (AND dan XOR). Bagi membezakan Alpha++ Miner asal dan yang baru termasuk model proses dan kaitannya, penilaian menggunakan nilai padanan dan penelitian telah dijalankan dalam kajian ini. Hasil kajian model proses yang diperoleh oleh Time-based Alpha++ Miner baru, adalah lebih baik keputusannya berbanding menggunakan algoritma Alpha++ Miner asal, berdasarkan hubungan selari OR, bunyi kawalan, nilai padanan, dan nilai penelitian.

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