Discovering Hierarchical Process Models: an Approach Based on Events Clustering
This work addresses the challenge of overly detailed and complex process models in process mining, which can hinder expert understanding and optimization efforts in companies.
The paper tackles the problem of discovering hierarchical business process models from low-level event logs to improve readability and understandability for experts, presenting an algorithm that constructs two-level workflow nets without imposing restrictions on process control flow, allowing for concurrency and iteration.
Process mining is a field of computer science that deals with discovery and analysis of process models based on automatically generated event logs. Currently, many companies use this technology for optimization and improving their processes. However, a discovered process model may be too detailed, sophisticated and difficult for experts to understand. In this paper, we consider the problem of discovering a hierarchical business process model from a low-level event log, i.e., the problem of automatic synthesis of more readable and understandable process models based on information stored in event logs of information systems. Discovery of better structured and more readable process models is intensively studied in the frame of process mining research from different perspectives. In this paper, we present an algorithm for discovering hierarchical process models represented as two-level workflow nets. The algorithm is based on predefined event ilustering so that the cluster defines a sub-process corresponding to a high-level transition at the top level of the net. Unlike existing solutions, our algorithm does not impose restrictions on the process control flow and allows for concurrency and iteration.