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No AI Without PI! Object-Centric Process Mining as the Enabler for Generative, Predictive, and Prescriptive Artificial Intelligence

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The uptake of Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts the way we work, interact, do business, and conduct research. However, organizations struggle to apply AI successfully in industrial settings where the focus is on end-to-end operational processes. Here, we consider generative, predictive, and prescriptive AI and elaborate on the challenges of diagnosing and improving such processes. We show that AI needs to be grounded using Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM). Process-related data are structured and organization-specific and, unlike text, processes are often highly dynamic. OCPM is the missing link connecting data and processes and enables different forms of AI. We use the term Process Intelligence (PI) to refer to the amalgamation of process-centric data-driven techniques able to deal with a variety of object and event types, enabling AI in an organizational context. This paper explains why AI requires PI to improve operational processes and highlights opportunities for successfully combining OCPM and generative, predictive, and prescriptive AI.


On the Potential of Large Language Models to Solve Semantics-Aware Process Mining Tasks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large language models (LLMs) have shown to be valuable tools for tackling process mining tasks. Existing studies report on their capability to support various data-driven process analyses and even, to some extent, that they are able to reason about how processes work. This reasoning ability suggests that there is potential for LLMs to tackle semantics-aware process mining tasks, which are tasks that rely on an understanding of the meaning of activities and their relationships. Examples of these include process discovery, where the meaning of activities can indicate their dependency, whereas in anomaly detection the meaning can be used to recognize process behavior that is abnormal. In this paper, we systematically explore the capabilities of LLMs for such tasks. Unlike prior work, which largely evaluates LLMs in their default state, we investigate their utility through both in-context learning and supervised fine-tuning. Concretely, we define five process mining tasks requiring semantic understanding and provide extensive benchmarking datasets for evaluation. Our experiments reveal that while LLMs struggle with challenging process mining tasks when used out of the box or with minimal in-context examples, they achieve strong performance when fine-tuned for these tasks across a broad range of process types and industries.


Navigating Process Mining: A Case study using pm4py

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Process-mining techniques have emerged as powerful tools for analyzing event data to gain insights into business processes. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of road traffic fine management processes using the pm4py library in Python. We start by importing an event log dataset and explore its characteristics, including the distribution of activities and process variants. Through filtering and statistical analysis, we uncover key patterns and variations in the process executions. Subsequently, we apply various process-mining algorithms, including the Alpha Miner, Inductive Miner, and Heuristic Miner, to discover process models from the event log data. We visualize the discovered models to understand the workflow structures and dependencies within the process. Additionally, we discuss the strengths and limitations of each mining approach in capturing the underlying process dynamics. Our findings shed light on the efficiency and effectiveness of road traffic fine management processes, providing valuable insights for process optimization and decision-making. This study demonstrates the utility of pm4py in facilitating process mining tasks and its potential for analyzing real-world business processes.


Intelligent Cross-Organizational Process Mining: A Survey and New Perspectives

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Process mining, as a high-level field in data mining, plays a crucial role in enhancing operational efficiency and decision-making across organizations. In this survey paper, we delve into the growing significance and ongoing trends in the field of process mining, advocating a specific viewpoint on its contents, application, and development in modern businesses and process management, particularly in cross-organizational settings. We first summarize the framework of process mining, common industrial applications, and the latest advances combined with artificial intelligence, such as workflow optimization, compliance checking, and performance analysis. Then, we propose a holistic framework for intelligent process analysis and outline initial methodologies in cross-organizational settings, highlighting both challenges and opportunities. This particular perspective aims to revolutionize process mining by leveraging artificial intelligence to offer sophisticated solutions for complex, multi-organizational data analysis. By integrating advanced machine learning techniques, we can enhance predictive capabilities, streamline processes, and facilitate real-time decision-making. Furthermore, we pinpoint avenues for future investigations within the research community, encouraging the exploration of innovative algorithms, data integration strategies, and privacy-preserving methods to fully harness the potential of process mining in diverse, interconnected business environments.


Revolutionizing Process Mining: A Novel Architecture for ChatGPT Integration and Enhanced User Experience through Optimized Prompt Engineering

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In the rapidly evolving field of business process management, there is a growing need for analytical tools that can transform complex data into actionable insights. This research introduces a novel approach by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, into process mining tools, making process analytics more accessible to a wider audience. The study aims to investigate how ChatGPT enhances analytical capabilities, improves user experience, increases accessibility, and optimizes the architectural frameworks of process mining tools. The key innovation of this research lies in developing a tailored prompt engineering strategy for each process mining submodule, ensuring that the AI-generated outputs are accurate and relevant to the context. The integration architecture follows an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) process, which includes various process mining engine modules and utilizes zero-shot and optimized prompt engineering techniques. ChatGPT is connected via APIs and receives structured outputs from the process mining modules, enabling conversational interactions. To validate the effectiveness of this approach, the researchers used data from 17 companies that employ BehfaLab's Process Mining Tool. The results showed significant improvements in user experience, with an expert panel rating 72% of the results as "Good". This research contributes to the advancement of business process analysis methodologies by combining process mining with artificial intelligence. Future research directions include further optimization of prompt engineering, exploration of integration with other AI technologies, and assessment of scalability across various business environments. This study paves the way for continuous innovation at the intersection of process mining and artificial intelligence, promising to revolutionize the way businesses analyze and optimize their processes.


Process mining for self-regulated learning assessment in e-learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Content assessment has broadly improved in e-learning scenarios in recent decades. However, the eLearning process can give rise to a spatial and temporal gap that poses interesting challenges for assessment of not only content, but also students' acquisition of core skills such as self-regulated learning. Our objective was to discover students' self-regulated learning processes during an eLearning course by using Process Mining Techniques. We applied a new algorithm in the educational domain called Inductive Miner over the interaction traces from 101 university students in a course given over one semester on the Moodle 2.0 platform. Data was extracted from the platform's event logs with 21629 traces in order to discover students' self-regulation models that contribute to improving the instructional process. The Inductive Miner algorithm discovered optimal models in terms of fitness for both Pass and Fail students in this dataset, as well as models at a certain level of granularity that can be interpreted in educational terms, which are the most important achievement in model discovery. We can conclude that although students who passed did not follow the instructors' suggestions exactly, they did follow the logic of a successful self-regulated learning process as opposed to their failing classmates. The Process Mining models also allow us to examine which specific actions the students performed, and it was particularly interesting to see a high presence of actions related to forum-supported collaborative learning in the Pass group and an absence of those in the Fail group.


Process Mining for Unstructured Data: Challenges and Research Directions

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The volume of data is continuously increasing and the ability and demand to efficiently analyze the data has become even more crucial. Machine learning and data mining are suitable techniques and tools to efficiently process and analyze the data. Complementary to both techniques is process mining [Aa16]. Process mining is a promising approach to find additional patterns (e.g., in terms of causal effects or bottlenecks) in data and in that way to give new insights into the data that could not be directly found with techniques like machine learning or data mining. The insights from processes are given by means of events that have been tracked by information systems. Then, this event data that is structured within a log (i.e., an event log), is used as input to any process mining algorithm. Process mining allows both an analysis based solely on event logs as well as a comparison between (manually generated or as-is) process models and an event log reflecting the to-be processes.


Identifying the Key Attributes in an Unlabeled Event Log for Automated Process Discovery

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Process mining discovers and analyzes a process model from historical event logs. The prior art methods use the key attributes of case-id, activity, and timestamp hidden in an event log as clues to discover a process model. However, a user needs to specify them manually, and this can be an exhaustive task. In this paper, we propose a two-stage key attribute identification method to avoid such a manual investigation, and thus this is a step toward fully automated process discovery. One of the challenging tasks is how to avoid exhaustive computation due to combinatorial explosion. For this, we narrow down candidates for each key attribute by using supervised machine learning in the first stage and identify the best combination of the key attributes by discovering process models and evaluating them in the second stage. Our computational complexity can be reduced from $\mathcal{O}(N^3)$ to $\mathcal{O}(k^3)$ where $N$ and $k$ are the numbers of columns and candidates we keep in the first stage, respectively, and usually $k$ is much smaller than $N$. We evaluated our method with 14 open datasets and showed that our method could identify the key attributes even with $k = 2$ for about 20 seconds for many datasets.


Analyzing An After-Sales Service Process Using Object-Centric Process Mining: A Case Study

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Process mining, a technique turning event data into business process insights, has traditionally operated on the assumption that each event corresponds to a singular case or object. However, many real-world processes are intertwined with multiple objects, making them object-centric. This paper focuses on the emerging domain of object-centric process mining, highlighting its potential yet underexplored benefits in actual operational scenarios. Through an in-depth case study of Borusan Cat's after-sales service process, this study emphasizes the capability of object-centric process mining to capture entangled business process details. Utilizing an event log of approximately 65,000 events, our analysis underscores the importance of embracing this paradigm for richer business insights and enhanced operational improvements.


Interactive Multi Interest Process Pattern Discovery

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Existing PPDMs typically are unsupervised and focus on a single dimension of interest, such as discovering frequent patterns. We present an interactive multi-interest-driven framework for process pattern discovery aimed at identifying patterns that are optimal according to a multi-dimensional analysis goal. The proposed approach is iterative and interactive, thus taking experts' knowledge into account during the discovery process. The paper focuses on a concrete analysis goal, i.e., deriving process patterns that affect the process outcome. We evaluate the approach on real-world event logs in both interactive and fully automated settings. The approach extracted meaningful patterns validated by expert knowledge in the interactive setting. Patterns extracted in the automated settings consistently led to prediction performance comparable to or better than patterns derived considering single-interest dimensions without requiring user-defined thresholds.