Dear there,

It can be a challenge to piece together the data coming from different data sources for process mining. One challenge is that case IDs need to be traced across multiple sub case IDs (for example document types in SAP).

The first challenge is that a common case ID must be created for the end-to-end process to be able to analyze the complete process with process mining. For example the process may consist of the following phases:

1. Sales order: traced by Sales order ID
2. Delivery: traced by Delivery ID
3. Invoicing: traced by Invoicing ID

To be able to analyze the complete process, all three phases must be correlated for the same case in one case ID column. For example, if a foreign key with the Sales order ID reference exists in the delivery and invoice phase, these references can be used for correlation and the case ID of the Sales order can be used as the overall case ID for the complete process.

Another challenge is that often there is not a one-to-one relationship between the sub case IDs. For example, you may encounter the following situation: A sales order can be split into multiple deliveries (see illustration below on the left). To construct the event log from the perspective of the sales order, in this case both deliveries should be associated with the same case ID (see middle). The resulting process map after process mining is shown on the right.

Going down the chain, a delivery can also be split invoiced etc. The same principle applies.













Conversely, it may also be the case that a delivery can combine multiple sales orders (see illustration below on the left).

In this case, again, to construct the event log from the perspective of the sales order, the combined delivery should be duplicated to reflect the right process for each case (see middle). As a result, the complete process is shown for each sales order and, for example, performance measurements between the different steps can be made (no performance measurements can be made in process mining between different cases).

The resulting process map is shown on the right.













To illustrate what would happen when the delivery is only associated to the first sales order, consider the example below.

It looks as if there was no delivery for sales order 2, which is not the case.

In return, one needs to be aware that the number of deliveries in the above mapping may be higher than the actual number of deliveries that took place. There were no two deliveries, just one!















The point is that there is no way around this. Wil van der Aalst sometimes calls this "flattening reality" (like putting a 3D-world in a 2D-picture). You need to choose which perspective you want to take on your process. 

What you can take away is the following: 

  • Sometimes, multiple pieces of data needs to be connected before you can start mining the end-to-end process
  • You need to think about the perspective that you want to take on your process (for example, sales order or delivery perspective?)
  • Often, different views can be taken during the extraction and may be needed for the analysis


 

Training Calendar 

Do you want to learn more like this month's lesson and get a head start in your own process mining initiatives by learning from the experts? Sign up for one of our monthly process mining trainings in Eindhoven. 

You will get a solid introduction into the general process mining concepts, combined with practical considerations like getting the right data, typical analysis questions, how to structure a process mining project, and hands-on exercises with our process mining software Disco. 

This message just came in from one of the participants of our latest training:

"Thank you for the session on Friday. It really gave me a lot of hands on tools to continue working with process mining."

And Tiese said earlier: 

"Thanks for providing an excellent process mining training today. Highly recommended for those new to the topic!"

These are the training dates available for the rest of the year:  

  • Fr, 26 September 2014
  • Fr, 31 October 2014
  • Fr, 28 November 2014
  • Fr, 12 December 2014

We have a very limited number of seats available, since we want to keep the training groups small, intimate, and productive. Sign up now, and reserve your spot!

As a process mining news reader, you can use the code ILOVEPROCESSMINING (right above the "Order Now" button) to get a 15% reduction when you register. We would love to meet you in Eindhoven!

 

Process Mining Party 

If you can be in Eindhoven on Monday 8 September at 21:00, you absolutely should come to our process mining party. It's going to be awesome, and we are looking forward to seeing you there!  


























 

Event Calendar 

To make sure you are not missing anything, here is a list of the upcoming process mining events we are aware of. 

Drop us a line if you know of other process mining events that will take place and we'll include it in the next issue.
 


That's it for today. We hope you also had a nice summer (or winter) vacation and are looking forward to a new year of process mining. 

All the best,
Your friends from Fluxicon BV







PS: Do you have further examples of different views you have created during your analysis? Hit reply and let us know about it. We are collecting examples and would be curious about yours!