What if you had twice as many people? What if you didn’t do that process step? Simulation is such an exciting topic because it allows you to test complex “what if”-scenarios without having to make the change in the real world (yet).

In the latest Process Mining Café, we talked with Lambros Viennas from Bridgnorth Aluminium and Sudhendu Rai from AIG about combining process mining with simulation. Based on an example in Disco and AnyLogic, we show how you can use process mining as a starting point for your simulation model. If you missed the live broadcast or want to re-watch the café, you can now watch the recording here.

Thanks again to Sudhendu and Lambros and all of you for joining us!

Links

Here are the links that we mentioned during the session:

• How process mining compares to simulation

• Example of how the process structure and process parameters can be extracted from the process mining tool for the simulation

• Sudhendu’s presentation at Process Mining Camp 2019 shows how AIG could reduce the cycle time from 12 days to 5 days (increasing the throughput by over 30%) by combining process mining with simulation

• In his follow-up talk at Process Mining Camp 2020, Sudhendu talks more about how they used real-world data and discrete-event simulation optimization for improving insurance business processes within AIG

• Sudhendu’s “Process Wind Tunnel for Improving Business Process” talk at the Winter Simulation Conference 2021 (slides)

• Bruce Silver’s articles on making simulation useful and why simulation in most BPM tools is a fake feature

• Modeling, and thus simulating, human behavior is challenging. You can take a look at Chapter 9 in my Ph.D. thesis, this paper, and Wil’s Business Process Simulation Survival Guide as a starting point

• Lambros recommends this whole list of references to dive deeper into the literature

Contact us via cafe@fluxicon.com if you have questions or suggestions for the café anytime.

Anne Rozinat

Market, customers, and everything else

• anne@fluxicon.com
• annerozinat
• @arozinat

Anne knows how to mine a process like no other. She has conducted a large number of process mining projects with companies such as Philips Healthcare, Océ, ASML, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, and many others.