In complex processes, various events can happen in different sequences. The prediction of the next event activity given an a-priori process state is of importance in such processes. Recent methods leverage deep learning techniques such as recurrent neural networks to predict event activities from raw process logs. However, deep learning techniques cannot efficiently model logical behaviors of complex processes. In this paper, we take advantage of Petri nets as a powerful tool in modeling logical behaviors of complex processes. We propose an approach which first discovers Petri nets from event logs utilizing a recent process mining algorithm. In a second step, we enhance the obtained model with time decay functions to create timed process state samples. Finally, we use these samples in combination with token movement counters and Petri net markings to train a deep learning model that predicts the next event activity. We demonstrate significant performance improvements and outperform the state-of-the-art methods on eight out of nine real-world benchmark event logs in accuracy.
Similarly, @cite_5 proposed a method to predict the likelihood of future process tasks by modeling parallel paths which can be either dependent or independent. The authors applied their methodology to a simulated marketing campaign business process model.
@cite_5
2186592864 1998640084 2501271607 2806051973
In semi-structured processes, the set of activities that need to be performed, their order and whether additional steps are required are determined by human judgment. There is a growing demand for operational support of such processes during runtime particularly in the form of predictions about the likelihood of future tasks. We address the problem of making predictions for a running instance of a semi-structured process that contains parallel execution paths where the execution path taken by a process instance influences its outcome. In particular, we consider five different models for how to represent an execution trace as a path attribute for training a prediction model. We provide a methodology to determine whether parallel paths are independent, and whether it is worthwhile to model execution paths as independent based on a comparison of the information gain obtained by dependent and independent path representations. We tested our methodology by simulating a marketing campaign as a business process model and selected decision trees as the prediction model. In the evaluation, we compare the complexity and prediction accuracy of a prediction model trained with five different models. In semi-structured case-oriented business processes, the sequence of process steps is determined by case workers based on available document content associated with a case. Transitions between process execution steps are therefore case specific and depend on independent judgment of case workers. In this paper, we propose an instance-specific probabilistic process model (PPM) whose transition probabilities are customized to the semi-structured business process instance it represents. An instance-specific PPM serves as a powerful representation to predict the likelihood of different outcomes. We also show that certain instance-specific PPMs can be transformed into a Markov chain under some non-restrictive assumptions. For instance-specific PPMs that contain parallel execution of tasks, we provide an algorithm to map them to an extended space Markov chain. This way existing Markov techniques can be leveraged to make predictions about the likelihood of executing future tasks. Predictions provided by our technique could generate early alerts for case workers about the likelihood of important or undesired outcomes in an executing case instance. We have implemented and validated our approach on a simulated automobile insurance claims handling semi-structured business process. Results indicate that an instance-specific PPM provides more accurate predictions than other methods such as conditional probability. We also show that as more document data become available, the prediction accuracy of an instance-specific PPM increases. Predictive modeling approaches in business process management provide a way to streamline operational business processes. For instance, they can warn decision makers about undesirable events that are likely to happen in the future, giving the decision maker an opportunity to intervene. The topic is gaining momentum in process mining, a field of research that has traditionally developed tools to discover business process models from data sets of past process behavior. Predictive modeling techniques are built on top of process-discovery algorithms. As these algorithms describe business process behavior using models of formal languages (e.g., Petri nets), strong language biases are necessary in order to generate models with the limited amounts of data included in the data set. Naturally, corresponding predictive modeling techniques reflect these biases. Based on theory from grammatical inference, a field of research that is concerned with inducing language models, we design a new predictive modeling technique based on weaker biases. Fitting a probabilistic model to a data set of past behavior makes it possible to predict how currently running process instances will behave in the future. To clarify how this technique works and to facilitate its adoption, we also design a way to visualize the probabilistic models. We assess the effectiveness of the technique in an experimental evaluation with synthetic and real-world data. Abstract Predictive business process monitoring methods use datasets of completed cases related to a process to predict the behaviour of running cases. To handle the large amounts of available event data, recent works have turned to deep learning techniques and have achieved fairly accurate results. However, results from these techniques are often difficult to interpret and explain. In the area of Recommender systems, factorization models have been an important class of predictive techniques due to its scalability and ability to infer latent features. Motivated by research in Recommender systems, this paper presents a predictive model that combines matrix factorization techniques from Recommender systems and knowledge from Business Process Management to learn interactions between latent features that can be used to predict the next event of an ongoing case. Evaluation on two real-life datasets from a Dutch Financial Institute and Volvo IT Belgium shows that the approach yields results that are comparable and at times superior to state-of-the-art techniques such as neural networks, yielding at most a precision of 0.87 for next event predictions.