It was exciting to meet each other in person again at this year’s Process Mining Camp. To make the camp as safe and relaxed as possible, we had arranged all the breaks, lunch, and the BBQ dinner outdoors.

We were a bit nervous about the weather. But luckily, the sun was shining, and we got a hot summer day without rain.

We had limited the number of participants for this year’s camp to a smaller group. The auditorium at the Technical University Eindhoven had good ventilation. And we were all wearing masks. So, we were good to go!

Keynote

In the keynote, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Process Mining Camp. It was nice to be back to where it started and where most of the camps since took place each year.

We also celebrated the 10th anniversary of Disco and discussed what it means to use process mining as an analysis tool.

Police

Then, we started with the practice talks. Machteld Oosterhof and Marianne Ravelli from the Police in the Netherlands talked about what it takes to change the decision-making mindset from being driven by knowledge to being guided by facts.

They shared three projects in which the initial assumption was quite different from the analysis results and ultimate resolutions. They warned the campers not always to trust their gut and to be aware that bias can be all around you.

AGCO Finance

At first, Sjoerd van der Zee from AGCO Finance was reluctant to do the process mining analysis himself. But now, he is grateful that he did because learning the process mining part is easy if you have the process and domain knowledge around you.

In his presentation, Sjoerd showed us how answering one question generated new, additional questions. And how you need to keep on asking the “why” question until there are no further questions left.

CorVel

After lunch, Beth Borman from CorVel in the United States looked at two types of processes: Structured and unstructured processes. For structured processes, the entire process could be analyzed at once. The analysis focused on identifying bottlenecks, exceptions, and areas of automation.

She also explained how she analyzed a very unstructured claims management process from various angles. You need to be creative and explore smaller pieces or segments. The focus is on finding patterns and standardization.

VolkerWessels

Robin Schouten from VolkerWessels shared his experience combining process mining with Lean Six Sigma.

He showed us in detail how he calculates the First Time Yield (FTY) for his quality measurement. And he demonstrated how he uses the statistical tools of Lean Six Sigma to determine the statistical significance of the discovered bottlenecks.

Discussion roundtables

After the coffee break, we all remained outside for the discussion roundtables. We split into twelve groups, each formed around topics from process mining in financial services, manufacturing, or healthcare, to use cases like customer journeys and auditing. Other groups discussed responsible process mining and the opportunities and challenges of new and old IT systems.

We had some initial questions prepared for the group members to get to know each other. But most of the question cards were empty and filled by the roundtable participants.

This way, the discussion was driven by the statements and questions of the group rather than by some pre-determined schedule. The groups talked for more than one and a half hours, and many wished they had even more time!

Each group had appointed one person to share a one-minute summary of their discussion with all of us. In a lightning round of summaries, we got a glimpse of the full range of discussions that were going on in all the groups.

GSK

Maxime Parres-Albert and Maxime Brochier from GSK in Belgium closed the day with the last practice talk. They improved the speed of the Human Biological Sample Management process for clinical trials of new vaccines using process mining. For example, clinical test results can now be released faster.

They also showed the complex data transformations that they had to perform to get the data in the right shape. And they shared their change management approach.

Thank you!

Throughout the day, we had great questions and lively discussions after each presentation. A big thanks to the speakers and to all of you for coming and being such an active part of the camp!

We also would like to thank the viewers who joined the livestream. Many of you told us that you could follow along and join the camp from afar.

If you would have liked a closer look at the slides, or you just want to revisit the experience, you should sign up to our camp mailing list today: We will send out the slides from the presentations tomorrow.

We hope to see all of you at next year’s camp! Until then, join the camp mailing list to receive the video recordings and notifications about our monthly café livestreams. We’ll meet again, back in the café or at the next camp!

No dice getting a ticket for Process Mining Camp tomorrow? You are in luck — We are going to provide a livestream¹, so you can watch the talks from the comfort of your home!

Tune in live for Process Mining Camp by visiting https://processminingcamp.com tomorrow, Thursday, 23 June, at 10:00 CEST. The program will run until 18:00. Check your timezone here and add the time to your calendar if you don’t want to miss it.

There is no registration required. Simply point your browser to https://processminingcamp.com when it is time. You can watch the camp talks and add your questions for the Q&A while we are on the air, right there on the camp website.

See you tomorrow, in Eindhoven and all around the world!

Process Mining Camp is just one week away. There are less than a handful of tickets left, so get yours now and sign up here if you want to come!

To get ready for camp, you can watch the recordings of Process Mining Camp 2021. If you have missed them before, watch the kick-off of last year’s camp, the audit day, the manufacturing day, and our camp day focused on process owners. Today, we bring you the recordings of the fifth and last day. The Friday was all about robots.

It started with the closing keynote by Wil van der Aalst, where he argued for a hybrid automation approach with the human in the loop. Together with Wil, we then talked about robots, ethics, and the future of machine learning with Manuela Veloso, Head of AI Research at JPMorgan Chase.

Man or Machine: Hybrid Intelligence

Process mining is not a magic wand. It is a discipline that requires a smart human being who can make the connection between the data and the underlying business process — with the help of the process mining tool. You have to apply your domain knowledge to interpret the results and develop improvement ideas.

Pundits love to tell us which professions will be replaced by robots any day now. All the while, the smart devices in our pockets and at home are not as smart as we would like them to be. Where exactly lies the boundary between what machines can do, and what will humans continue to do well into the future? In his closing keynote, Wil explored the questions of where technology outperforms humans, where human intelligence is needed, and where both blend together to combine the best of both worlds.

Process Mining Café: Robot Ethics

Human-AI interaction has many challenges. For example, organizations are reluctant to deploy learned policies if they do not trust them because they don’t understand them. Explainability research tries to address this by creating explanations for otherwise black-boxed models. Furthermore, ethical considerations and data privacy play a role.

Together with Manuela and Wil, we discuss misconceptions about artificial intelligence and how realistic expectations can lead to more productive learning systems.

Process Mining Camp takes place on Thursday, 23 June 2022. Add the time to your calendar and register now for this year’s camp!

This year’s Process Mining Camp is just around the corner. See the program here and sign up now!

To get ready for camp, you can watch the recordings of Process Mining Camp 2021. If you have missed them before, watch the kick-off of last year’s camp, the audit day, and the manufacturing day. Today, we bring you the recordings of the fourth day. The Thursday was all about process mining in telecommunications.

It started with the presentation by Gary Bonneau from Cox Communications, who showed how he got from disparate data sources to end-to-end process visibility. Gary and I then talked about data autonomy and skills with the Process Mining Camp speaker and process miners of the year Carmen Lasa Gómez from Telefónica and Javier García Algarra from U-tad University.

End to End Process Analysis

Cox Communications is an American company that provides digital cable television, telecommunications, and home automation services in the United States. Gary is a senior manager for product operations at Cox Business (the business side of Cox Communications).

Gary has been working in the telecommunications industry for over two decades and — after following the topic for many years — is a bit of a process mining veteran as well. Now, he is using process mining to visualize his fulfillment processes. The business life cycles are very complex. Multiple data sources must be connected to get the complete picture of the end-to-end process. At camp, Gary showed how process mining allows him to analyze his process by himself, independently from the IT department.

Process Mining Café: Make Your Data Work

Process mining provides a new autonomy to process owners who can finally analyze their own process without long IT projects or consultant teams.

Together with Carmen, Javier, and Gary, we discuss who owns the process mining data, how to get access to data to analyze on your own, and what kind of skill profile an independent process miner has.

Stay tuned for the videos from the last day of camp.

Process Mining Camp takes place on Thursday, 23 June 2022. Add the time to your calendar and register now for this year’s camp!

We are happy to announce the release of Disco 3.2.

This update is all about making what’s good about Disco even better, most notably importing data. Disco will now support an even wider array of timestamp formats, in both CSV and XES imports. And you can now directly import Excel spreadsheets of unlimited size.

We have updated the graph layout and runtime for Disco, to make sure you get the best performance and the latest security fixes ¹. This update also improves the general performance and stability of Disco, and we have fixed a number of bugs and annoyances.

Thanks for all your ideas, and your bug reports. Keep them coming and, as always, thank you for using Disco!

How to update

As with every update, this release also contains a number of smaller enhancements and fixes. We recommend that you update to the latest version of Disco at your earliest convenience.

Disco will automatically download and install this update the next time you run it, if you are connected to the internet.

If you prefer to install this update of Disco manually, you can download and run the updated installer packages from fluxicon.com/disco/download

Changes

• CSV Import:
  • Improved parsing timestamps with sub-millisecond precision and time zones.
  • Give more specific feedback on import problems.
• Excel Import: Load event logs from XLSX files of arbitrary size.
• XES Import: Parse timestamps with sub-millisecond precision.
• MXML Import: Parse timestamps with sub-millisecond precision.
• Process Map: Improved performance and stability of graph layout.
• Connection: Improved proxy configuration.
• Platform: Java update.