Process Mining is a method to analyze event logs that were created from digital traces in IT systems, in order to generate process insights and to unlock optimization as well as improvement potentials for your business.

 

What is an event log?

An event log is a table that contains case and event information. Three fields are necessary to run the algorithms: CaseID, activity name and start and/or end timestamp. Additionally, the event log can contain context information, among others the company, areas, machines, users.

 

In Process Mining the concepts of cases, activities, events and process variants are used.

 

A case or process instance is a collection of events that are undertaken to transform an object according to a process. A process variant is the sequence from start until end in one case.

A simple example is a ticket process: an entire ticket process is one case, the process to be performed compromises the activities "Insert ticket", "Assign seriousness", "Take in charge ticket", "Wait", "Resolve Ticket" and "Closed".

An event is an activity related to a specific case and a specific timestamp: "Resolve ticket" is an activity, but it has occured three times in three different cases, so it forms three distinct events.

An event can have attributes that describe the context of its occurrence, e.g. start and end timestamps, a specific event ID, a resource (user or machine that executed the activity), the event costs, etc.

Obviously, cases can have specific attributes as well, e.g. the ticket type, the customer, the product, the workgroup, and so on.

 

Further information can be found following this link: https://mpm-processmining.com/registrierung-processmining-blackbox/

 

 

 

It happens in some processes that no unique answer can be given when choosing the CaseID. This happens, for example, when in an Order to Cash process an invoice number or a delivery bill can be used as CaseID in addition to the sales order number. In such cases, but also in other cases, the use of Object Centric Process Mining can be helpful. More information about this can be found in this section: Traditional and Object-Centric Process Mining.