Ontological approach to enhance results of business process mining and analysis
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a solution to the problem of a lack of machine processable semantics in business process management.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper introduces a methodology that combines domain and company‐specific ontologies and databases to obtain multiple levels of abstraction for process mining and analysis. The authors valuated this approach with a real case study from the apparel domain, using a prototype system and techniques developed in the Process Mining Framework (ProM). The results of this approach are compared with similar research.
Findings
Semantically enriching process execution data can successfully raise analysis from the syntactic to the semantic level, and enable multiple perspectives of analysis on business processes. Combining this approach with complementary research in semantic business process management (SBPM) can provide results comparable to multidimensional analysis in data warehouse and on line analytical processing (OLAP) technologies.
Originality/value
The approach and prototype described in this paper improve the richness of semantics available for open‐source process mining and analysis tools like ProM, and the richness and detail of the resulting analysis.
Keywords
- Semantics
- Process analysis
- Business process
- Process mining and analysis
- Semantic process mining and analysis
- Semantic business process management
- Ontological approach
- Multi‐perspective process analysis
- Multidimensional analysis
- Semantic enhancement
- Semantic annotation log
- Ontology‐database mapping
- Ontology layers
Citation
Jareevongpiboon, W. and Janecek, P. (2013), "Ontological approach to enhance results of business process mining and analysis", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 459-476. https://doi.org/10.1108/14637151311319905
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited