Cambridge Centre for On the 3rd September 2020, C2D3 and Celonis co-hosted the 1st Academic (virtual) Roundtable on Process Mining in the UK.
Over 50 participants from academia gathered together with big data unicorn Celonis to hear a wide range of academic and industry talks around Process Mining and its applications from Healthcare, to Supply Chain to Covid 19 analyses.
Research on Process Mining has gained traction all over the world throughout the past few years. Located at the exciting intersection between Business Process Management and Data Science, Process Mining is attracting an interdisciplinary field of researchers. Within academic and industrial projects, Process Mining has been applied to analyze virtually all processes imaginable, from state-of-the-art purchasing processes over supply chain management and Business Strategy to the analysis of healthcare data.
The 1st Academic Roundtable on Process Mining presented a wide range of talks from experts in the field to rapid student elevator pitches, followed by breakout discussions, and a social hour with real wine and cheese.
Keynote
“You can think of Process Mining like crossing the Alps. Process Mining is not a helicopter to fly over the Alps but a compass and bicycle for the journey.”
Jan introduced the participants to Process Mining, and what is not Process Mining! He described the minimum requirements of event log structures and the flow of activities outwards from event logs: discovery, performance, deviance, and conformance.
As a teacher of Business Process Management, Jan talked about resources available to other teachers including the textbook Fundamentals of Business Process Management and supplementary materials. More information can be found here http://fundamentals-of-bpm.org/supplementary-material/
Academic and Industry Presentations
“Patient pathways are not straight forward, and pathways can be mined through Electronic Healthcare Records.”
There are many challenges with using healthcare data: the data is messy and electronic computing issues can greatly affect logs. The lack of use of IT infrastructure in hospitals creates a problem with data quality. These are all issues that must be overcome to determine whether patients follow standard pathways, and if not, why do they follow different pathways?
“Showing Software Tools can really enhance online learning experiences and offers a chance for the students to work on their professional skill set. We use a real-life business simulation game to aid learning.”
Dr Jörg Reis is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at The Business School, City, University of London. Jörg is also Course Director for Supply Chain Management and Global Logistics, City, University of London.
Jörg talked about the course design and structure for the online MSc, PGDip and PGCert in Supply Chain Management and Global Logistics programme.
“Do you need to switch suppliers in the short term? In real life, Process Mining can help suggest new vendors in real time”
The Covid19 crisis has presented major worldwide challenges, including the huge disruption of supply chains. Using Joh Hopkins University Covid case numbers, hot spot countries and regions were analysed to see where deliveries of goods could be an issue. Against this, vendors were benchmarked to see whether a different supplied would be more likely to deliver similar goods in a better timeframe.
Student Elevator Pitches
We heard three excellent student elevator pitches, from a student initiative to Masters projects.
Usamah Khan, HULT International Business School
Upskilling for the Future – The Story of the Process Mining E-Learning Club
Usamah and the E-Learning Club identified a lag between teaching data science methods and the real-world skills needed for career opportunities and progression. The E-Learning Club put together a Process Mining programme to upskill, using a combination of reading, lectures, and hands-on activities.
Julia Wolf, University of Southampton
Mapping the Customer Journey in an E-Commerce Context
Julia talked about her Masters dissertation using Process Mining using real-world datasets from a German Mail Order Company. The datasets provided came with one major problem, the datasets did not contain timestamps in the event logs. Julia described the process to overcome the timestamp issue through data manipulation, to provide insights into Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and clickstream data.
Gunnar Gylafson, London School of Economics
Working on Conformance Checking for the Training of Future Doctors
In this pitch, Gunnar described using process mining to compare conformance to medical training of doctors, after initial training and again after recap training. This was conducted using event logs of medical training records for a proceedure with many distinct activities.
Social hour with real wine and cheese
Process mining discussions continued over a glass of wine and nibbles of crackers and cheese. Celonis kindly provided the wine and cheese, which was delivered to the participants’ address! As we relaxed into discussions, the physical element of the virtual roundtable brought some normality to the situation and a hope that we can meet in-person in the near future.