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Article
Publication date: 2 November 2015

Ana Rocío Cárdenas Maita, Lucas Corrêa Martins, Carlos Ramón López Paz, Sarajane Marques Peres and Marcelo Fantinato

Process mining is a research area used to discover, monitor and improve real business processes by extracting knowledge from event logs available in process-aware information…

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Abstract

Purpose

Process mining is a research area used to discover, monitor and improve real business processes by extracting knowledge from event logs available in process-aware information systems. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and support vector machines (SVMs) in data mining tasks in the process mining context. The goal was to understand how these computational intelligence techniques are currently being applied in process mining.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a systematic literature review with three research questions formulated to evaluate the use of ANNs and SVMs in process mining.

Findings

The authors identified 11 papers as primary studies according to the criteria established in the review protocol. Most of them deal with process mining enhancement, mainly using ANNs. Regarding the data mining task, the authors identified three types of tasks used: categorical prediction (or classification); numeric prediction, considering the “regression” type, and clustering analysis.

Originality/value

Although there is scientific interest in process mining, little attention has been specifically given to ANNs and SVM. This scenario does not reflect the general context of data mining, where these two techniques are widely used. This low use may be possibly due to a relative lack of knowledge about their potential for this type of problem, which the authors seek to reverse with the completion of this study.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 21 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 February 2008

A. Tiwari, C.J. Turner and B. Majeed

This paper seeks to examine the area of business process mining, providing an overview of state‐of‐the‐art techniques. An outline of the main problems experienced in the practice…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to examine the area of business process mining, providing an overview of state‐of‐the‐art techniques. An outline of the main problems experienced in the practice of process mining is given along with reference to work that addresses the most challenging issues experienced in this field. This paper also aims to examine the application of soft computing techniques to process‐mining problems.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on a comprehensive review of literature covering more than 50 research papers. These papers are analysed to identify current trends and future research directions in the field.

Findings

Process‐mining techniques are now becoming available as graphical interface‐driven software tools, where flow diagram representations of processes may be manipulated as part of the mining task. A significant number of papers employ mining heuristics to aid in the task of process discovery. Soft computing algorithms are increasingly being investigated to aid the accuracy and speed of mining algorithms. Many papers exist that address common mining problems such as noise and mining loops. However, problems such as duplicate tasks, mining perspectives and delta analysis require further research.

Originality/value

The contribution of this paper is to provide a summary of the current trends in process‐mining practice and point out future research directions. A review of the work in this new and expanding area has been provided in the form of illustrative graphs and tables that identify the trends in this area. This is the most comprehensive and up‐to‐date review of business process‐mining literature.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 October 2018

Güzin Özdağoğlu, Gülin Zeynep Öztaş and Mehmet Çağliyangil

Learning management systems (LMS) provide detailed information about the processes through event-logs. Process and related data-mining approaches can reveal valuable information…

Abstract

Purpose

Learning management systems (LMS) provide detailed information about the processes through event-logs. Process and related data-mining approaches can reveal valuable information from these files to help teachers and executives to monitor and manage their online learning processes. In this regard, the purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the current direction of the literature on educational data mining, and an application framework to analyze the educational data provided by the Moodle LMS.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents a framework to provide a decision support through the approaches existing in process and data-mining fields for analyzing the event-log data gathered from LMS platforms. In this framework, latent class analysis (LCA) and sequential pattern mining approaches were used to understand the general patterns; heuristic and fuzzy approaches were performed for process mining to obtain the workflows and statistics; finally, social-network analysis was conducted to discover the collaborations.

Findings

The analyses conducted in the study give clues for the process performance of the course during a semester by indicating exceptional situations, clarifying the activity flows, understanding the main process flow and revealing the students’ interactions. Findings also show that using the preliminary data analyses before process mining steps is also beneficial to understand the general pattern and expose the irregular ones.

Originality/value

The study highlights the benefits of analyzing event-log files of LMSs to improve the quality of online educational processes through a case study based on Moodle event-logs. The application framework covers preliminary analyses such as LCA before the use of process mining algorithms to reveal the exceptional situations.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 25 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 August 2020

Sohei Ito, Dominik Vymětal and Roman Šperka

The need for assuring correctness of business processes in enterprises is widely recognised in terms of business process re-engineering and improvement. Formal methods are a…

Abstract

Purpose

The need for assuring correctness of business processes in enterprises is widely recognised in terms of business process re-engineering and improvement. Formal methods are a promising approach to this issue. The challenge in business process verification is to create a formal model that is well-aligned to the reality. Process mining is a well-known technique to discover a model of a process based on facts. However, no studies exist that apply it to formal verification. This study aims to propose a methodology for formal business process verification by means of process mining, and attempts to clarify the challenges and necessary technologies in this approach using a case study.

Design/methodology/approach

A trading company simulation model is used as a case study. A workflow model is discovered from an event log produced by a simulation tool and manually complemented to a formal model. Correctness requirements of both domain-dependent and domain-independent types of the model are checked by means of model-checking.

Findings

For business process verification with both domain-dependent and domain-independent correctness requirements, more advanced process mining techniques that discover data-related aspects of processes are desirable. The choice of a formal modelling language is also crucial. It depends on the correctness requirements and the characteristics of the business process.

Originality/value

Formal verification of business processes starting with creating its formal model is quite new. Furthermore, domain-dependent and domain-independent correctness properties are considered in the same framework, which is also new. This study revealed necessary technologies for this approach with process mining.

Details

Journal of Modelling in Management, vol. 16 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5664

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 2012

Chris J. Turner, Ashutosh Tiwari, Richard Olaiya and Yuchun Xu

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparison of a number of business process mining tools currently available in the UK market. An outline of the practice of business…

4732

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparison of a number of business process mining tools currently available in the UK market. An outline of the practice of business process mining is given, along with an analysis of the main techniques developed by academia and commercial entities. This paper also acts as a primer for the acceptance and further use of process mining in industry, suggesting future directions for this practice.

Design/methodology/approach

Secondary research has been completed to establish the main commercial business process mining tool vendors for the market. A literature survey has also been undertaken into the latest theoretical techniques being developed in the field of business process mining.

Findings

The authors have identified a number of existing commercially available business process mining tools and have listed their capabilities within a comparative analysis table. All commercially available business process mining tools included in this paper are capable of process comparison and at least 40 per cent of the tools claim to deal with noise in process data.

Originality/value

The contribution of this paper is to provide a state‐of‐the‐art review of a number of commercial business process mining tools available within the UK. This paper also presents a summary of the latest research being undertaken in academia in this subject area and future directions for the practice of business process mining.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 18 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 13 March 2023

Larry Goodson

156

Abstract

Details

Strategy & Leadership, vol. 51 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1087-8572

Content available
Article
Publication date: 3 April 2019

Periklis Saragiotis

This paper aims to review the application of business process management (BPM) in the port sector. Its objective is to understand whether BPM principles are applied in the port…

4479

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to review the application of business process management (BPM) in the port sector. Its objective is to understand whether BPM principles are applied in the port sector, the role of the procedural factor in port performance evaluation and whether electronic data interchange systems have been used for process management purposes.

Design/methodology/approach

The objective of this research is to conduct a critical review of existing academic literature in the domain of BPM and its application in the ports sector. This paper assessed more than a hundred recent publications, from key journals in the domains of port economics, BPM and information technology. The two principle platforms used are the online databases of the World Bank Group and the University of Antwerp.

Findings

Academic literature reviewed reveals a partial application of BPM in the port and maritime sector. BPM related research is conducted via the utilization of modeling algorithms or optimization and simulation tools. There exists evidence that electronic data interchange (EDI) data extracted from EDI platforms can be used to model inter-organizational business processes in several industries. Yet, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no research investigates Port Community System (PCS) or single window (SW) data utilization for BPM purposes, although PCS and SW benefits are well documented. Port performance is largely assessed based on the production theory, and limited number of studies use elements of procedural efficiency as variables for their analysis.

Originality/value

The holistic application of BPM has been researched in numerous industries but in the port sector. This paper constitutes the first section of an original research study to define key components, assumptions and constraints for developing a comprehensive BPM framework in the port sector.

Article
Publication date: 6 January 2023

Lisa Higgins, Anthony Marshall, Kirsten Crysel and Jacob Dencik

Because of its effectiveness, process mining is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. A recent IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) survey found that 65 percent of organizations report…

Abstract

Purpose

Because of its effectiveness, process mining is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. A recent IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) survey found that 65 percent of organizations report actively using process mining to improve processes. And in partnership with software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers to add even greater insight into their processes, 69 percent compare their organization’s data with other SaaS customers. And as many as 77 percent of supply chain executives say they are at least at the implementation stage of process and task mining.

Design/methodology/approach

The IBM Institute for Business Value and APQC, in cooperation with Oxford Economics, surveyed 2,000 C-level executives in first half of 2022 from 13 countries in all major geographies and across 22 industries. The IBV and APQC implemented an in-depth analysis of how organizations use benchmarking and process mining tools, the benefits they gain from use of these tools and how they anticipate using them in the future.

Findings

Big data and digital technologies also creates new possibilities for measuring performance and revealing process improvement opportunities through process mining ? a relatively new discipline that applies data science to discover, validate and improve workflows in real time.

Practical/implications

By utilizing data from IT systems to create a process model and then examining the end-to-end process, process mining enables root causes of variations from norms to be identified using specialized algorithms, and these insights enable management to see if processes are functioning as intended and identify new opportunities to optimize them.

Originality/value

More recently, the scope of process mining initiatives has widened to encompass more sophisticated mission-critical functions, notably human capital, cybersecurity and sales. Organizations that embrace process mining outperform others across key business measures, including profitability, innovation, agility, customer satisfaction and technological sophistication. 10;

Details

Strategy & Leadership, vol. 51 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1087-8572

Article
Publication date: 21 September 2012

Ahmet Soylu, Felix Mödritscher, Fridolin Wild, Patrick De Causmaecker and Piet Desmet

Mashups have been studied extensively in the literature; nevertheless, the large body of work in this area focuses on service/data level integration and leaves UI level…

Abstract

Purpose

Mashups have been studied extensively in the literature; nevertheless, the large body of work in this area focuses on service/data level integration and leaves UI level integration, hence UI mashups, almost unexplored. The latter generates digital environments in which participating sources exist as individual entities; member applications and data sources share the same graphical space particularly in the form of widgets. However, the true integration can only be realized through enabling widgets to be responsive to the events happening in each other. The authors call such an integration “widget orchestration” and the resulting application “mashup by orchestration”. This article aims to explore and address challenges regarding the realization of widget‐based UI mashups and UI level integration, prominently in terms of widget orchestration, and to assess their suitability for building web‐based personal environments.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors provide a holistic view on mashups and a theoretical grounding for widget‐based personal environments. The authors identify the following challenges: widget interoperability, end‐user data mobility as a basis for manual widget orchestration, user behavior mining – for extracting behavioral patterns – as a basis for automated widget orchestration, and infrastructure. The authors introduce functional widget interfaces for application interoperability, exploit semantic web technologies for data interoperability, and realize end‐user data mobility on top of this interoperability framework. The authors employ semantically enhanced workflow/process mining techniques, along with Petri nets as a formal ground, for user behavior mining. The authors outline a reference platform and architecture that is compliant with the authors' strategies, and extend W3C widget specification respectively – prominently with a communication channel – to foster standardization. The authors evaluate their solution approaches regarding interoperability and infrastructure through a qualitative comparison with respect to existing literature, and provide a computational evaluation of the behavior mining approach. The authors realize a prototype for a widget‐based personal learning environment for foreign language learning to demonstrate the feasibility of their solution strategies. The prototype is also used as a basis for the end‐user assessment of widget‐based personal environments and widget orchestration.

Findings

The evaluation results suggest that the interoperability framework, platform, and architecture have certain advantages over existing approaches, and the proposed behavior mining techniques are adequate for the extraction of behavioral patterns. User assessments show that widget‐based UI mashups with orchestration (i.e. mashups by orchestration) are promising for the creation of personal environments as well as for an enhanced user experience.

Originality/value

This article provides an extensive exploration of mashups by orchestration and their role in the creation of personal environments. Key challenges are described, along with novel solution strategies to meet them.

Article
Publication date: 27 May 2022

Seyed Hesam Hosseinizadeh Mazloumi, Alireza Moini and Mehrdad Agha Mohammad Ali Kermani

New maintenance hypotheses such as lean smart maintenance emphasized internal integration. Since the maintenance process is not fully integrated with other business processes, it…

Abstract

Purpose

New maintenance hypotheses such as lean smart maintenance emphasized internal integration. Since the maintenance process is not fully integrated with other business processes, it indicates that some of the problems in the maintenance process are caused by other departments. Additionally, nothing can be managed or improved without first measuring it. In order to enhance internal integration, this study developed a model that makes use of information systems data to examine synchronization and collaboration across departments engaged in maintenance operations.

Design/methodology/approach

This research connects maintenance management and business process management through information systems. A conceptual module model based on CMMS is proposed that will use data which are already available in CMMS and, using process mining, will assess the level of synchronization between departments within an organization.

Findings

This conceptual model will serve as a roadmap for creating better value-added CMMS software. This system operates as a performance measurement tool in three majors, including organizational analysis, workflow analysis and eventually, a future simulation of maintenance processes. This module will serve as a decision support system, highlighting opportunities for improvement in maintenance processes.

Originality/value

A practical guideline is provided for the future development of CMMSs and their enhancement to intelligence. All assumptions are based on maintenance theories, techniques for measuring maintenance performance and business process management and process mining.

1 – 10 of over 1000