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Process Mining

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Workflow mining

Definition

Process mining techniques allow for the analysis of business processes based on event logs. For example, the audit trails of a workflow management system, the transaction logs of an enterprise resource planning system, and the electronic patient records in a hospital can be used to discover models describing processes, organizations, and products. Moreover, such event logs can also be used to compare event logs with some a priori model to see whether the observed reality conforms to some prescriptive or descriptive model.

The basic idea of process mining is to discover, monitor, and improve realprocesses (i.e., not assumed processes) by extracting knowledge from event logs. Today many of the activities occurring in processes are either supported or monitored by information systems. Consider for example ERP, WFM, CRM, SCM, and PDM systems to support a wide variety of business processes while recording well-structured and detailed event logs....

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Recommended Reading

  1. van der Aalst W.M.P. Reijers H.A., and Song M. Discovering social networks from event logs. Comput. Support. Coop. Work, 14(6):549–593, 2005.

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  2. van der Aalst W.M.P. Weijters A.J.M.M., and Maruster L. Workflow mining: discovering process models from event logs. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng., 16(9):1128–1142, 2004.

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  3. Grigori D., Casati F., Castellanos M., Dayal U., Sayal M., and Shan M.C. Business process intelligence. Comput. Ind., 53(3):321–343, 2004.

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  4. Rozinat A. and van der Aalst W. M. P. Conformance checking of processes based on monitoring real behavior. Inf. Syst., 33(1):64–95, 2007.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    W. M. P. van der Aalst

Authors
  1. W. M. P. van der Aalst
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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van der Aalst, W.M.P. (2009). Process Mining. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1477

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