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From the archives

Watch the recordings from our café sessions at your convenience here. You can also subscribe to our channel on YouTube, if that's your kind of thing.

Urban Mobility

2024-03-20Andrea Delgado and Daniel Caligari García (Universidad de la República)

Andrea and Daniel discover process flows for the bus lines in Montevideo using open data from the city. They then export the XML process maps from Disco and display the discovered processes in the spatial city map. We discuss their project, and Andrea and Daniel give you all the information that you need to reproduce their approach.

HR Processes

2024-02-21Alex Cheremukhin and Rudi Niks

There is a lot of variability in Human Resources (HR) processes. This is only natural as people are different! And there is different legislation in different countries, different types of benefits, etc. We show two approaches for dealing with this complexity: One bottom-up approach and one top-down approach using the APQC standard process framework.

Role of the Analyst

2024-01-24Hugo Verver (VGZ) and Rudi Niks

Hugo walks us through the analysis of the complaints process at the Dutch health insurance provider VGZ. As the data analyst, Hugo could use process mining to bring a fact-based view of the process to the subject matter experts. But he also needed to protect them from jumping to conclusions too early when the data was not good enough yet.

Activity-Based Costing

2023-12-13Willem Glasbergen

In Activity-Based Costing, indirect costs such as salaries and utilities are tied back to products and services. If you combine Activity-Based Costing with with process mining, then you can allocate costs to activities in your processes and evaluate “buckets of cases” according to their costs for the organization. Willem and Anne show how this works based on a concrete example.

Data Collection

2023-11-13Tobias Zepter (BVV)

What do you do if you want to do process mining but you don’t have any data? Tobias found an elegant solution: He created a system that allows employees to collect data about process executions in a lightweight and system-independent way. One advantage is that this internal system has privacy considerations built-in.

Analysis Transformations

2023-10-11Scott Leslie (Evidant) and Rudi Niks

The data you find in information systems was not created for process mining purposes. So, often, you need to shape the data to make it suitable. Furthermore, different analysis questions may require particular views on the data. Together with Scott, we look at two concrete examples to illustrate the steps in such transformations.

Project Planning

2023-09-20Rudi Niks and Anne Rozinat (Fluxicon)

Rudi and Anne talk about what it takes to make a good project plan. We first discuss the criteria for selecting a process for your process mining initiative and then go through the five ingredients of your project plan. Rather than just a big, scary document, the project plan is there for you and helps you manage the risks and communication points in the team.

Public Policy Evaluation

2023-07-19Nuno Serra (Food4Sustainability CoLAB)

If you are creative, you can find process mining data in unexpected places. Nuno shows us how he turned static data from an agricultural government funding program into a process view. After creating timestamps and activities from implicit information, he could analyze how farmers requested more or less aid over the years in the context of the development of their farms.

Data Preparation

2023-05-17Rudi Niks and Anne Rozinat (Fluxicon)

Getting the data is often one of the first challenges you have at the beginning of your process mining project. Rudi and Anne answer the most frequent questions around process mining data. We also show you two common data transformations based on a practical example: One for merging two data sets and one for transposing a data set from columns to rows.

Measures and Targets

2023-03-29Muthuvelan Varadharajulu, Jan van Moll (Philips Healthcare), and Rudi Niks

Jan and Muthu have applied process mining to their quality management processes. On top of that, they have also extended their analyses with the so-called process capability index (Cpk). We show, based on a concrete process mining example, how this works. And you can even try the approach yourself by using their Excel template.

Game Analytics

2023-03-01Magy Seif El-Nasr (UCSC)

Magy gives an overview of the different types of games and traditional game analytics. We look at examples, where her group has used process mining to understand the flow of games. We also talk about the ethics of using game analytics to make games more addictive and discuss the challenge of abstracting the data to the right level.

Auditing

2023-02-01Jasmine Handler and Andreas Preslmayr (City of Vienna)

Process mining does not replace the traditional audit approach. However, it requires some changes and a conscious effort to fit process mining into the existing way of working. In some places, more work is needed. In other places, things get easier. Together with Jasmine and Andreas, we talk about their data-driven audit approach with process mining step by step.

Process of Process Mining

2022-10-20Pnina Soffer (Haifa University), Barbara Weber (University of St. Gallen), and Francesca Zerbato (University of St. Gallen)

How exactly are people performing their analyses? Are they first exploring or immediately answering questions? And how do they deal with new questions that come up in the process? Pnina Soffer, Barbara Weber and Francesca Zerbato share their experiences from this new sub-field in the process mining research area.

Data Quality

2022-09-07Kanika Goel (QUT Brisbane) and Niels Martin (Hasselt University)

Garbage in, garbage out! Data quality is essential for any data analysis technique. If you base your analysis on data, you must ensure that the data is correct. Otherwise, your results will be wrong. With Kanika Goel and Niels Martin, we talk about the specific data quality problems you encounter in process mining projects.

Project vs. Process

2022-05-18Fred van Middendorp (Heijmans) and Rudi Niks

Project-driven organizations like construction companies approach everything from a project perspective. However, process improvement initiatives require process awareness. How do you deal with this as a process mining practitioner? We speak with Fred van Middendorp about project vs. process thinking.

Simulation

2022-04-28Lambros Viennas (Bridgnorth Aluminium) and Sudhendu Rai (AIG)

What if you had twice as many people? What if you didn't do that process step? Simulation allows you to test complex “what if”-scenarios without having to make the change in the real world (yet). But it's not easy! Together with Lambros Viennas and Sudhendu Rai we show how you can use process mining as a starting point for your simulation model.

Forensics

2022-03-30Lucas Vousten and Vincenzo Salden (Joanknecht)

Process mining may not be the right tool for fraud detection. However, it can help us understand what happened after an attack, for example, by visualizing the intruder's path. Lucas Vousten and Vincenzo Salden talk about how process mining can help IT security and dive into a concrete forensics example based on a ransomware attack.

Lean Six Sigma

2022-03-02Anne Rozinat and Rudi Niks (Fluxicon)

The Lean Six Sigma methodology provides a practical and customer value-focused framework for making improvements. Rudi and Anne talk about how process mining fits into Lean and Six Sigma, based on a concrete example. We also discuss where process mining changes the traditional Lean Six Sigma approach.

Change Management

2022-01-31Sebastiaan van Rijsbergen (NN) and Roger Schmid (Stryker)

Organizational change is hard. As a process miner, you run into this challenge as soon as you have identified potential improvements and need to implement them. How do you get people on board? And how do you get them to stick with you in the new way? We talked with Sebastiaan van Rijsbergen and Roger Schmid about the strategies that have worked for them.

Manufacturing

2021-12-16Stefanie Rinderle-Ma (TU München)

Stefanie Rinderle-Ma showed us how their open source process engine steers production processes. A nice side-effect of their system is that it collects data that can be used for process mining again! We also talked about the power of domain knowledge, how process mining can leverage sensor data, and realistic expectations for automation.

Perspectives

2021-11-18Marco Montali (unibz)

When you analyze a data set with process mining, you take a process perspective on your data. This perspective is determined by what you choose as the case ID, activity name, and timestamp during the import step. Marco Montali talks with us about the various process mining perspectives and their ontology-based data extraction approach.

Privacy, Security, and Ethics

2021-10-06Dirk Fahland and Felix Mannhardt (TU Eindhoven)

Process miners need to be aware of their responsibility, both around the data and in how they present their analysis results. Together with Dirk Fahland and Felix Mannhardt we share many practical tips that you can start implementing today. We also discuss new research in the area of responsible data science.

Strategy and Execution

2021-09-08Bogdan Ciungu (JTI) and Rudi Niks

There is often a divide between the strategy and the execution world in process mining. The people who are dealing with strategy are different from the people who are executing. Bogdan Ciungu joined us to discuss how organizations can bridge this divide. We talk about use cases, RFIs, and we show a concrete example for a business case.

Public Administration

2021-07-07Richard Verheijen, Vincent Veraart, and Lewis Ho (UWV)

Introducing process mining at an organization is never easy. Together with Vincent, Lewis, and Richard we talk about the strategies that worked for UWV, and about the success factors for one concrete project. All their tips are relevant not only for public administrations but for all organizations who want to introduce process mining.

Freestyle Data Transformation

2021-04-28Léonard Studer (Ville de Lausanne)

What can you do if your data — at least at first sight — does not seem suitable for process mining at all? You look for “sequences of stuff”. Léonard Studer shares three examples of how he transformed problematic data, created non-existent data from file system logs, and even manually transcribed data in different scenarios.

Healthcare

2021-03-23Luise Pufahl (TU Berlin) and Fran Batchelor (UW Health)

Healthcare is a very interesting but also challenging application area for process mining. For example, a data set with 1000 cases can easily have 1000 variants, because every patient follows a unique path. Together with Luise Pufahl and Fran Batchelor we discuss the specific challenges of the healthcare domain along the phases of a typical process mining project.

Legacy Systems

2021-02-24Derek Russell (Objektum) and Steve Kilner (Vlegaci)

Legacy systems are old, often mission-critical systems that can cause quite some headaches for their owners. Replacing these old systems is not easy, precisely because so much knowledge has been poured into them. Derek Russell and Steve Kilner joined us to talk about the different approaches to legacy system mining.

Customer Journey Analysis

2021-01-20Daisy Wain (GOV.UK) and Rudi Niks

In a customer journey analysis, you look at the process from the viewpoint of the customer. Daisy gives us an overview about her recent analysis of the user journey on the “Start a Business” part of the GOV.UK website, and Rudi takes us through the three main challenges that you will encounter when you analyze customer journeys with process mining.

From Research to Practice

2020-12-16Hajo Reijers (Utrecht University)

Our conversation with Hajo Reijers, Professor for Business Process Management & Analytics at Utrecht University. We talked about how processes are made of people, his interest in empirical research methods, industry cooperations with master students, two new research papers from this year and many other things.

Data Requirements for New IT Systems

2020-11-24Gijs Eerdmans and Erik Rootjes (Vivat)

Imagine your company introduces a new IT system and you have the opportunity to influence the data that will be collected. You want to make sure that the data is suitable for your process mining analyses in the future. Which data properties exactly will you need to ensure in the new system? We made a checklist for you, so you don't forget something essential.

Have a cup of Process Mining

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. After a long day of hard work in the process mines, we gather in our friendly neighborhood café to find out what's happening, meet new friends, and spend some quality time with our fellow process miners.

Process Mining Café is our little experiment for the winter months — It's way too cold for camping, but that doesn't mean we have to go hibernate. There is no strict format, and no fixed schedule. But there is rhyme, and hopefully there is some reason.

Our sessions are broadcast live, right here on this site. We also have a chat, so you can join the conversation with us and your fellow barflies in the café.

Keep me posted

If you don't want to miss the next Process Mining Café, just leave this website open and stay awake! Alternatively, try one of the following options.

Them nerds from Fluxicon again

Process Mining Café is brought to you by your friends at Fluxicon. We make Disco, the best software for process mining. We have also written a book about process mining, and every year we organize Process Mining Camp, the first conference focused on practical process mining.