Workflow mining: discovering process models from event logs

Contemporary workflow management systems are driven by explicit process models, i.e., a completely specified workflow design is required in order to enact a given workflow process. Creating a workflow design is a complicated time-consuming process and, typically, there are discrepancies between the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering Vol. 16; no. 9; pp. 1128 - 1142
Main Authors: van der Aalst, W., Weijters, T., Maruster, L.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2004
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Algorithms
Customer relationship management
Data mining
Design engineering
Enterprise resource planning
Index Terms- Workflow mining
Isolation technology
Logs
Management
Management information systems
Mines
Mining
Petri nets
Routing
Software systems
Technology management
Workflow
workflow management
Workflow management software
Workflow management systems
ISSN:1041-4347, 1558-2191
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Contemporary workflow management systems are driven by explicit process models, i.e., a completely specified workflow design is required in order to enact a given workflow process. Creating a workflow design is a complicated time-consuming process and, typically, there are discrepancies between the actual workflow processes and the processes as perceived by the management. Therefore, we have developed techniques for discovering workflow models. The starting point for such techniques is a so-called "workflow log" containing information about the workflow process as it is actually being executed. We present a new algorithm to extract a process model from such a log and represent it in terms of a Petri net. However, we also demonstrate that it is not possible to discover arbitrary workflow processes. We explore a class of workflow processes that can be discovered. We show that the /spl alpha/-algorithm can successfully mine any workflow represented by a so-called SWF-net.
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ISSN:1041-4347
1558-2191
DOI:10.1109/TKDE.2004.47