EMiT: A process mining tool
Contents
1. export the basic Petri net with probabilities added to all arc if available and timing information Woflan This output format can be imported by Woflan for further analysis 13 Woflan supports verification of the discovered model nox Convert log to XML Build relations Export Petrinet Import XML relations file f Export detail levet 7 IV Waiting time I Sync time I Sojoum time _Open relations jeans M mean MV mean MV mean variance I variance I variance IZ minimum minimum minimum maximum I maximum maximum Output folder D My Documents EMIT v2 10 WF log examples 3 Cluster color 7 Sky Blue IV write probabilities MDOT options Petrinet orientation eft to right 7 Make jpg map i Page size faa Make ps pg_ Make ps pg_ I Use extemal DTD s Fig 4 EMiT post processing After exporting the discovered model in various formats some options for dot can be set The P net orientation setting specifies whether the Petri net should be draw from left to right or from top to bottom The Page size setting can be set to A4 or Letter If these options are set dot can be used to create pictures and other exports The buttons Make jpg map and Make ps jpg can be used to generate the graphics files This way EMiT provides several ways to visualize the mining result 6 Conclusion In this paper EMiT is presented as a tool to mine process models from2. 67 0 0000 4 6667 Set of erroneus relations Variance 43 5556 0 0000 43 5556 Y Edit selected set Minimum 0 0000 0 0000 0 0000 Maximum 14 0000 0 0000 14 0000 Fig 3 EMiT processing To build a Petri net the Make Petri net alpha button should be clicked as shown in Figure 3 Now the core a algorithm is called and a Petri net is constructed When the Petri net is built the loops of length one are added to it and the result is automatically exported to the dot format This format serves as input for the dot program 9 that will visualize the Petri net in a smart way The output created by dot is loaded back into EMiT again and the result of the mining algorithm is shown When the Petri net is constructed EMiT is ready for the post processing phase 4 3 Post processing In this phase the original log is loaded into the program again Using the original log and the Petri net generated in the processing step additional information can be derived Besides the relations inferred in the pre processing phase can be altered To calculate additional information for the Petri net the original log is used Since the Petri net that is rediscovered should be able to generate the same log traces as were given as input a simple algorithm is used First a token is placed in the source place of the Petri net Now for one case the tasks appearing in the log are fired one by one Of course only the tasks that are actually used in the p
3. EMiT A process mining tool B F van Dongen and W M P van der Aalst Department of Technology Management Eindhoven University of Technology P O Box 513 NL 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands b f v dongen tue nl Abstract Process mining offers a way to distill process models from event logs originating from transactional systems in logistics banking e business health care etc The algorithms used for process mining are complex and in practise large logs are needed to derive a high quality process model To support these efforts the process mining tool EMiT has been built EMiT is a tool that imports event logs using a standard XML format as input Using an extended version of the a algorithm 3 8 it can discover the underlying process model and represent it in terms of a Petri net This Petri net is then visualized by the program automatically generating a smart layout of the model To support the practical application of the tool various adapters have been developed that allow for the translation of system specific logs to the standard XML format As a running example we use an event log generated by the workflow management system Staffware 1 Introduction During the last decade workflow management concepts and technology 2 4 10 11 have been applied in many enterprise information systems Workflow man agement systems such as Staffware IBM MQSeries COSA etc offer generic modeling and enactment capabilities for stru
4. at which moment an employee actually started working on a task On the other hand the Staffware log contains information that does not fit into our FSM Some of that information however can be very useful Therefore another kind of event is defined namely normal In our example the Start and Terminated events that refer to the start and end of a case have normal as event type Note that Staffware is just used as an example For other systems e g ERP systems CRM systems or other workflow management systems alternative mappings are used However the resulting mapping is always made onto the Finite State Machine described in Figure 1 3 2 XML format After defining the possible states of a task a standard format for storing logs can be defined This format is described by the following DTD 1 The DTD describes the current format of EMiT A new and extended format speci fied in terms of an XML schema has been defined Future generations of EMiT will be based on this format See http www processmining org for more details lt ELEMENT WorkFlow_log source processt gt lt ELEMENT source EMPTY gt lt ATTLIST source program CDATA REQUIRED gt lt ELEMENT process case gt lt ATTLIST process id ID REQUIRED gt lt ATTLIST process description CDATA none gt lt ELEMENT case log_line gt lt ATTLIST case id ID REQUIRED gt lt ATTLIST case description CDATA none gt lt ELEMENT log_line task_name e
5. cessed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 48 Cc Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IB Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 53 F Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 D Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 53 E Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lE Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 53 E Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 I D Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 56 F Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 E Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 14 10 H Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IG Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 14 10 H Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IG Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 14 13 I Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 0 6 I Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 14 13 I Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 I Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 14 15 Terminated 2002 04 18 09 07 Terminated 2002 04 18 14 15 Table 1 A Staffware workflow log Schedule Scheduled Complete Complete Fig 1 An FMS showing the states and transitions of a task New This is the state in which a task starts After creation of the task this is the initial state From this state the task can be scheduled i e it will appear as a work item in the worklist In the Staffware example this schedule event is shown as the processed to line Scheduled When a task is sent to one or more users it becomes scheduled A
6. ctured business processes By mak ing graphical process definitions i e models describing the life cycle of a typ ical case workflow instance in isolation one can configure these systems to support business processes Besides pure workflow management systems many other software systems have adopted workflow technology Consider for example ERP Enterprise Resource Planning systems such as SAP PeopleSoft Baan and Oracle CRM Customer Relationship Management software etc Despite its promise many problems are encountered when applying workflow technol ogy One of the problems is that these systems require a workflow design i e a designer has to construct a detailed model accurately describing the routing of work Modeling a workflow is far from trivial It requires deep knowledge of the workflow language and lengthy discussions with the workers and management involved Instead of starting with a workflow design one could also start by gathering information about the workflow processes as they take place In this paper it is assumed that it is possible to record events such that i each event refers to a task i e a well defined step in the workflow ii each event refers to a case i e a workflow instance and iii events are totally ordered Most information system will offer this information in some form Note that transactional systems such as ERP CRM or workflow management systems indeed provide event logs It is also
7. fter that two things can happen Either the task is picked up by a user who starts working on it or it is withdrawn from the worklist The start event is not logged by Staffware but most other systems do e g InConcert logs this event as TASK ACQUIRE Staffware logs the withdraw event Again Staffware uses a different term withdrawn rather than withdraw Active This state describes the state of the task while a user is actually working on it The user is for example filling out the form that belongs to this task Now three things can happen First a task can be suspended for example when the user goes home at night while the work is not com pletely finished Second the task can be completed successfully and third the task can be aborted In the Staffware log only the complete event appears as Released by The abort and suspend events are not logged in Staffware Completed Now the task is successfully completed Suspended When a task is suspended the only thing that can happen is that it becomes active again by resuming the task Note that it is not possible for a task to be aborted or completed from this state Before that it has been resumed again Terminated Now the task is not successfully completed but it cannot be restarted again It can be seen that the Staffware example does not contain all the possible information For example it cannot be shown
8. g time the synchronization time and the sojourn time are shown If when replaying the original log a transition is unable to fire a message is generated stating the name of the transition Such a message is only given for the first error The second error message that can be generated is that after completing a case there are still tokens remaining in the net In order to solve problems generated by the program it is possible to change the set of ordering relations that are inferred in the pre processing phase By clicking on a transition in the Petri net all relations involving that transition will be shown except the relation which represents the fact that two tasks have no causal or parallel relation These relations can then be altered 5 Exporting the Petri net After the Petri net has been rediscovered it can be exported By clicking the Export Petri net button the Petri net is saved in three different formats Each format is saved in a separate file s low detail dot This output format is used to export only the basic Petri net with probabilities added to all arcs if available No timing information will be shown in this output file Together with the dot file a number of HTML files are created These files can be used together with the dot jpg and imap export to make a web page Each of these HTML files contain timing information for a specific place high detail dot This output format is used to
9. important to note that the applicability of process mining is not limited to workflow management systems The only requirement is that it is possible to collect logs with event data These event logs are used to construct a process specification which adequately models the behavior registered The term process mining is used for the method of distilling a structured process description from a set of real executions In this paper we do not give an overview of related work in this area Instead we refer to the survey paper 6 and a special issue of Computers in Industry 7 In this paper the process mining tool EMiT is presented Using an example log generated by Staffware we illustrate the various aspects of the tool In Section 3 the XML format used to store logs is described Section 4 discusses the three main steps of the mining process Section 5 discusses the export and visualization of the Petri nets discovered in the mining process Finally we conclude the paper 2 Running example To illustrate the functionality of EMiT an example log generated by the Staffware 12 is used Since Staffware is one of the leading workflow management systems it is a nice illustration of the practical applicability of EMiT For presentation purposes we consider a log holding only six cases as shown in Table 1 Although the log presented here is rather small only six cases it is already hard to find the structure of the underlying workflow net by just e
10. lations button as shown in Figure 2 Now the relations are built as described above but also the loops of length one and two are identified By clicking the Edit relations button the program advances to the processing phase 4 2 Processing In the next phase the core a algorithm is called However since the a algorithm cannot deal with loops of length one and two some refinements are made First of all all tasks that are identified as a loop of length one cf 3 8 are taken out of the set of tasks These loops are then plugged back in later in the processing phase Second for all tasks that are identified as loops of length two the relations are changed If two tasks are identified as being a loop of length two together say task A and task B then a parallel relation between the two exists Al B This relation is removed and two new relations are added in the following way A Band B A More about these refinements can be found in 1 ES EMIT relations inspector o x D D padi schatule OE complete g gt E G z z 95000 Saeed ae hes gt emai oso e meg schedule sod F af F O F schedule complete Check the shown Petrinet for eto Make Petrinet alpha 100 Close Select an available process a E El Eal Open XML log main_process z Syne time Waiting time Sojourn time Global flow time apate e 9 3 3 i Mean 4 66
11. ng The core algorithm used in the processing phase that is implemented in EMT is the a algorithm This algorithm is not presented in this paper For more information the reader is referred to 3 8 14 or http www processmining org 4 1 Pre processing In the pre processing phase the log is read into EMiT and the log based ordering relations are inferred based on that log In order to build these relations the assumption is made that the events in the log are totally ordered However several refinements can be made First of all it is possible to specify which events should be used in the rediscovering process When using the default settings only the complete event of a task is taken into account Basically the log on which the ordering relations will be built is the original log where all entries element type log_line corresponding to event types not selected are removed However if a case contains a withdraw or abort event and that event is not specified then the whole case is excluded The second option is that parallel relations can be inferred based on time information present in the log As described in 8 two tasks A and B are considered to be in parallel if and only if in the log A is directly followed by B at least once and B is directly followed by A at least once However here the assumption is made that A and B are atomic actions while in real situations tasks span a certain time interval The begi
12. nning and the end of such a task however can be considered atomic EMiTis capable of inferring parallelism for all events of a certain task if first task A is started and then task B is started before task A has ended In order to let EMiT do this the user can give the boundaries of the intervals in terms of event types For the Staffware example one profile is set to schedule and complete For Staffware this is a logical definition since tasks are always scheduled in the same order by the system i e although things can be executed in parallel they are scheduled sequentially By setting the profile to schedule and complete EMT is still able to detect parallelism PSE Convert log toXML Build relations Export Petrinet Open Workflow Log Overlap parallel Open XML log Task A re m H 1 i i Select an available process Tasks m ii i 1 rea main_process none 7 hob b a a t t t l Rediscovering the Petine 1 ti and e schedule x 2 schedule MUsed events ts and t4 complete gt schedule M Schedule eee T Start p Relations export I Suspend D My Documents EMiT v2 10 WF log examples XML Sta Ex Resume Export I Complete 4 Withdraw Relations Built goo Edit relations Bile eS ATE OT og ee es a a I Use extemal DTD s Fig 2 EMiT pre processing When all options are set the pre processing phase can start by clicking the Build re
13. ocessed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 A Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lA Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 B Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 Ic Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 B Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 Ic Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 D Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IF Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 E Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lE Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 D Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IF Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 E Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 1E Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 G Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lH Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 G Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lH Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 I Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 11 Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 I Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 I Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 07 Terminated 2002 04 18 09 06 Terminated 2002 04 18 09 07 Case 2 Case 5 Step description Event User yyyy mm aa Step description Event User yyyy mm dd hh mm Start bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 Start bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 47 A Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 5 A Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 47 A Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 5 A Released By bvdongen s
14. pecial Issue of Computers in Industry Volume 53 Number 3 Elsevier Science Publishers Amsterdam 2004 W M P van der Aalst A J M M Weijters and L Maruster Workflow Mining Dis covering Process Models from Event Logs QUT Technical report FIT TR 2003 03 Queensland University of Technology Brisbane 2003 Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering AT amp T Graphviz Open Source Graph Drawing Software including DOT http www research att com sw tools graphviz S Jablonski and C Bussler Workflow Management Modeling Concepts Architec ture and Implementation International Thomson Computer Press London UK 1996 F Leymann and D Roller Production Workflow Concepts and Techniques Prentice Hall PTR Upper Saddle River New Jersey USA 1999 Staffware Staffware 2000 GWD User Manual Staffware plc Berkshire United Kingdom 2000 H M W Verbeek T Basten and W M P van der Aalst Diagnosing Workflow Processes using Woflan The Computer Journal 44 4 246 279 2001 A J M M Weijters and W M P van der Aalst Rediscovering Workflow Models from Event Based Data using Little Thumb Integrated Computer Aided Engi neering 10 2 151 162 2003
15. re processing are taken into account Every time a token enters a place by firing a transition a timestamp is logged for this token When the token is consumed again timing information is added to the place This timing information consist of three parts First there is the waiting time This is the time a token has spent in a place while the transition consuming the token was enabled Second there is the synchronization time This is the time a token spent in a place while the transition consuming the token was not yet enabled This typically happens if that transition needs multiple tokens to fire Finally there is the sojourn time which is the sum of the two An example of these times for the place connecting D complete with G schedule can be found in the lower right part of Figure 3 This process is repeated for all cases If everything goes well then a message is given and the picture showing the Petri net is updated This update is done to show the probabilities for each choice in the Petri net If a place has multiple outgoing arcs a choice has to be made The probability that each arc is chosen is basically the number of occurrences of the transition on that arc in the log divided by the sum of all occurrences of all transitions with an incoming arc from that place The timing information for each place can be made visible in the lower right corner of the window by just clicking on a specific place in the picture Some metrics for the waitin
16. s In R Meersman Z Tari and D C Schmidt editors On The Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2003 CoopIS DOA and ODBASE volume 2888 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science pages 389 406 Springer Verlag Berlin 2003 W M P van der Aalst J Desel and A Oberweis editors Business Process Man agement Models Techniques and Empirical Studies volume 1806 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science Springer Verlag Berlin 2000 W M P van der Aalst and B F van Dongen Discovering Workflow Performance Models from Timed Logs In Y Han S Tai and D Wikarski editors International Conference on Engineering and Deployment of Cooperative Information Systems EDCIS 2002 volume 2480 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science pages 45 63 Springer Verlag Berlin 2002 W M P van der Aalst and K M van Hee Workflow Management Models Methods and Systems MIT press Cambridge MA 2002 W M P van der Aalst and M Song Mining Social Networks Uncovering interac tion patterns in business processes In M Weske B Pernici and J Desel editors International Conference on Business Process Management BPM 2004 Lecture Notes in Computer Science Springer Verlag Berlin 2004 W M P van der Aalst B F van Dongen J Herbst L Maruster G Schimm and A J M M Weijters Workflow Mining A Survey of Issues and Approaches Data and Knowledge Engineering 47 2 237 267 2003 W M P van der Aalst and A J M M Weijters editors Process Mining S
17. taffw_ 2002 04 18 13 49 B Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 elc Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 49 B Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 51c Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 53 D Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 5 F Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 53 E Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 E Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 53 E Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 6 lE Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 56 D Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 F Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 57 G Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 H Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 57 G Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 H Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 59 I Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 I Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 59 I Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 06 I Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 14 04 Terminated 2002 04 18 09 07 Terminated 2002 04 18 09 07 Case 3 Case 6 Step description Event User yyyy mm aa Step description Event User yyyy mm dd hh mm Start bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 Start bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 48 A Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lA Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 48 A Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 lA Released By bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 13 48 c Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IB Pro
18. timed logs The whole conversion process from a log file in some unspecified format towards a Petri net representation of a process model is described in a number of different steps Along the way an example is used to illustrate the use of the tool We invite the reader to use the tool The tool is available for down load from http www processmining org This download includes some 30 ex amples both artificial and practical The example presented in this paper is called sw_ex_14 log and it is converted into sw_ex_14 xml Both files are included in the download In the future we plan to extend the tool in various ways First of all we plan to enhance the mining algorithm to be able to deal with complex process patterns invisible duplicate tasks noise etc 1 Second we are developing ad ditional adaptors to extract information from more real life systems e g SAP and FLOWer Third we are working on embedding parts of the system in the ARIS Process Performance Monitoring PPM tool and exporting the result to BPR tools like Protos We are extending the scope of the mining process to include organizational data data flow social network analysis etc Last but not least we are merging the tools EMiT Thumb 14 and MinSoN 5 into an integrated tool References 1 10 11 12 13 14 A K A de Medeiros and W M P van der Aalst and A J M M Weijters Workflow Mining Current Status and Future Direction
19. vent date time originator gt lt ELEMENT task_name PCDATA gt lt ELEMENT event EMPTY gt lt ATTLIST event kind normal schedule start withdraw suspend resume abort complete REQUIRED gt lt ELEMENT date PCDATA gt lt ELEMENT time PCDATA gt lt ELEMENT originator PCDATA gt This XML format describes a workflow log in the following way First the process that is logged needs to be specified In the Staffware example as shown in Table 1 only one process is shown Then for each process a number of cases is specified The Staffware example contains six cases Each of these cases consist of a number of lines in the log For each line a log_line element is used This element typically contains the name of the task that is present in the log Further it contains information about the state transition of the task in the transactional model a timestamp and the originator of the task Except for the originator of the task all this information is used by EMiT in the mining process The originator information is added for future extensions EMiT can be used to convert log files from different systems into the common XML format For this purpose external programs are called by EMiT The list of programs available can be extended by anyone who uses the tool to suit their own needs 4 The mining process The mining process consists of a number of steps namely the pre processing the processing and the post processi
20. xamining the log Therefore a tool like EMiT is needed However before EMiT can be used the log is translated into a generic input format that is tool independent i e EMiT does not rely on the specific format used by a system like Staffware Instead there is a Staffware adapter translating Staffware logs to the XML format described in the next section 3 A common XML log format Every log file contains detailed information about the events as they take place However commercial workflow system use propriety logging formats Therefore EMtT uses a tool independent XML format Since events in the log refer to state changes a first step is to describe the states in which each specific task can be For this purpose we use a transactional model 3 1 A transactional model To describe the state of a task the Finite State Machine FSM shown in Fig ure 1 is used The FSM describes all possible states of a task from creation to completion The arrows in this figure describe all possible transitions between states and it is assumed that these transitions are atomic events i e events that take no time that appear in the log All states and the transitions between those states will be discussed below Case 1 Case 4 Step description Event User yyyy mm dd hh mm Step description Event User yyyy mm dd hh mm Start bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 l Start bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 09 05 A Processed To bvdongen staffw_ 2002 04 18 IA Pr
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