Abstract
This paper deals with organizational perspective mining in workflow. First, it exposes a comparative study of three representative workflow mining systems: InWolve, WorkflowMiner and ProM. To perform our comparative study, we propose the following quality criteria: the capacity to filter and to convert an events log, the capacity to discover workflow perspectives and the capacity to support their analysis. The main limit of these systems is their inability to deal with organizational perspective mining issue. By organizational perspective, we mean, the social structures defining the activity distribution among actors involved in the workflow (namely federation, coalition, market or hierarchy), as well as the interaction protocols ruling the communications between them (such as contract net, auction or vote). To compensate the previous drawback, the paper proposes an agent-oriented approach to support the organizational perspective mining. More precisely, it proposes an events log model, which extends existing models by taking into account the interactions among actors, thanks to the performative-based agent communication language FIPA-ACL. It also presents a concrete case study to better illustrate the organizational perspective mining and some algorithms for organizational structures and interaction protocols mining. Finally, we describe in detail our discopflow tool to validate our solution.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abdelkafi M, Bouzguenda L (2010) Discovering Organizational Perspective in Workflow using Agent Approach: an illustrative case study. EOMAS in Conjunction with CAISE, Hammamet, Tunisia
Abdelkafi M, Bouzguenda L, Gargouri F (2011) Discopflow: a new tool for discovering organizational structures and interaction protocols in workflow. in international conference on information technology and e-services, ICITeS’11, Sousse-Tunisia, 10–12
Boudewijn F, Dongen V, Van der Aalst WMP (2004) EMiT: a process mining tool. ICATPN pp 454–463
Bouzguenda L, Bouaziz R, Andonoff E (2008) Dynamic plugging of business processes in cross organizational Workflow. Int J Comp Sci Appl Technomath Res Found, Bombay India 5(3b):141–164
Bui T, Lee J (1999) An agent-based framework for building decision support systems. Decis Support Syst 25(3):225–237
Ferber J, Gutknecht O (1998) A meta-model for the analysis and design of organizations in multi-agent systems. In: Proceeding of the 3rd International Conference on Multi-Agents Systems (ICMAS’98). EEE CS Press
Gaaloul W, Gaaloul K, Bhiri S, Haller A, Hauswirth M (2009) Log-based transactional Workflow mining. Distr Parallel Databases 25(3):193–240
Hanachi C, Sibertin-blanc C (2004) Protocol moderators as active middles-agent in multi-agent system. Int J Auton Agents Multiagent Syst (JAAMAS) 8(2):131–164
Herbst J, Karagiannis D (2004) Workflow mining with InWoLvE. Computers in industry—special issue: process/Workflow mining, vol 53 Issue 3, Elsevier Science Publishers, B. V. Amsterdam, pp 245–264
Huang C, Trappey JC, Yao H (2006) Developing an agent-based workflow management system for collaborative product design. Indust Manag Data Syst 106(5):680–699
Kaplan SM (1990) Conversation builder: an open architecture for cooperative work. Human-computer interaction, interact ‘90, IFIP, pp 917–922
Linh Thao LY, RINDERLE S, DADAM P (2006) Mining staff assignment rules from event-based data. In business process management workshops, pp 177–190
Grossi, D.; Dignum, F.; Dignum, V.; Dastani, M.; &Royakkers, L. (2006). Structural aspects of the evaluation of agent organizations. COIN@ECAI
Miguel V, Charoy F (2003) Bonita. Workfow cooperative system. http ://bonita.objectweb.org
Muehlen ZM (2004) Organizational management in workflow applications–issues and perspectives. Inf Technol Manage 5(3–4):271–291
Searle JR (1969) Speech acts. Cambridge University Press
Searle JR (1975) A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. K. Gunderson (ed) Language, mind and knowledge, University of Minnesota Press, pp 334–369
Van der Aalst WMP (2005) Process mining in cscw systems. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International conference on computer supported cooperative work in design (CSCWD), Coventry University/IEEE Computer Society Press, London, UK, pp 1–8
Van der Aalst WMP (2011) process mining: discovery, conformance and enhancement of business processes. Springer-Verlag ISBN 978-3-642-19344-6 pp I–XVI, 1–352
Van der Aalst WMP (2012) Process mining: overview and opportunities. ACM Trans Manag Inf Syst 3(2):7
Van der Aalst WMP, Boudewijn F, Dongen V, Herbst J, Maruster L, Schimm G, Weijters AJMM (2003a) Workflow mining: a survey of issues and approaches. Data Knowl Eng 47(2):237–267
Van der Aalst WMP, Ter Hofstede AHM, Kiepuszewski B, Barros A (2003) Workflow patterns. Int J Distr Parallel Databases 34(1):5–51
Van der Aalst WMP, Aldred L, Dumas M, Ter Hofstede AHM (2004) Design and implementation of the YAWL system. CAiSE pp 142–159
Van der Aalst WMP, Reijers HA, Song M (2005) Discovering social networks from events log. Computer Supported Cooperative work 14(6):549–593
Van der Aalst WMP,Van Dongen BF, Günther CW, Rozinat A, Verbeek E, Weijters T (2009) ProM: The Process Mining Toolkit. BPM (Demos)
Verbeek HMW, Hirnschall A, Van der Aalst WMP (2002) XRL/flower: supporting inter-organizational workflows using XML/Petri-net technology. WES 93–108
Verbeek HMW, Buijs Joos CAM, Boudewijn F, Dongen V, Van der Aalst WMP (2010) XES, XESame, and ProM 6. CAiSE Forum 60–75
Weijters AJMM, Van der Aalst WMP (2003) Rediscovering workflow models from event-based data using little thumb. Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering 10(2):151–162
Winograd T (1988) A langage/action perspective on the design of cooperative work. Human Computer Inter 3(1):3–30
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the professor Chihab Hanachi for its precious collaboration regarding the organizational structures and interaction protocols mining in Workflow.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendices
Appendix 1: Interface showing the discovered contract net protocol
Appendix 2: Interface showing the AGR representation of workflow actor
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bouzguenda, L., Abdelkafi, M. An agent-based approach for organizational structures and interaction protocols mining in workflow. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 5, 10 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-015-0250-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-015-0250-8