Project: PROCESS MINING FOR BUSINESS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

The current economic situation increasingly requires organizations to speed up the rate at which they respond to market needs and to service or product innovation. This demand can be only met by increasing the ability to adapt to the requirements arising from the marketplace. Efficient governance of the core business processes therefore is a key success factor. _x000D_Governing business processes, however, is not easy. Business processes are cross-functional and involve multiple actors and heterogeneous data. Such complexity calls for a structured and planned approach, requiring a substantial amount of competence and human resources._x000D_In this context, it is important to develop tools for the definition and improvement of business processes. Process mining is a research area that can give a substantial contribution to the design and the development of these tools. Under the umbrella of process mining, many techniques have been developed to, among others, check if a current operational process conforms to a given process model, discover process models describing the operational processes in detail, or analyze the social relationships among workers involved in the process. All these techniques use execution logs extracted from various process aware information systems._x000D_The focus of process mining research however has, so far, COly been on the technical aspects of algorithms and techniques, i.e. the conditions under which techniques can be applies are known and the correctness of algorithms is typically shown, but the techniques require expert users to interpret the results. Furthermore, little to no research has been performed on how process mining can continuously lead to business improvement._x000D_SIAV and Pallas-Athena (Pallas), the industrial Ps of the project team, develop information systems that support the execution of business processes. From their standpoint, they share the same view about the importance of process mining as an enabling technology for the development of effective tools for continuous improvement of business processes._x000D_Especially Pallas-Athena is leading in the commercial application of process mining, for example recognized by Gartner as a top 25 BPMS (Business Process Management System) vendor (see http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/what-is-driving-dynamic-case-management--010196.php)._x000D_SIAV and Pallas-Athena already have established research collaborations in the area of process mining with leading Universities, i.e. University of Padua (UniPD) and Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), respectively. TU/e can be considered as the birth-place of process mining research, as well as the world-leading institute in Business Process Management research. University of Padua, on the other hand, holds strong competence in machine learning, data and process mining, formalisms for the specification of distributed and concurrent systems, as well as on model-driven engineering. _x000D_In this project, these four Ps (SIAV, Pallas, UniPD, and TU/e) join forces to develop techniques, methods and tools for analysis and continuous improvement of businesses. In particular, the project consortium aims to embed process mining techniques firmly into business process improvement methodologies, especially for businesses that are currently not process aware._x000D_

Acronym	PROMPT (Reference Number: 6696)
Duration	01/01/2012 - 31/12/2014
Project Topic	The project aims at developing techniques for analysis and continuous improvement of business processes, based on process mining. The project results will be characterized by enhanced usability, the basic enabler for process mining introduction into businesses currently not process aware.
Project Results (after finalisation)	We have developed a set of software tools to support a method to use process mining techniques in all stages of business process improvement.
Network	Eurostars
Call	Eurostars Cut-Off 6

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
4	EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY	Partner	Netherlands
4	PALLAS ATHENA	Partner	Netherlands
4	SIAV SPA	Coordinator	Italy
4	UNIVERSITA' DI PADOVA	Partner	Italy