Finding Semantical Patterns in Collections of Workflow Models

Abstract

This work introduces the reader to a thesis study focusing on process mining. The goal of this thesis is to propose a method for describing semantical workflow patterns and to discover their occurrences in a given set of workflow models. Where many others study patterns solely on their syntax, we are interested in patterns with semantical value. This way, we capture patterns at a higher level and be able to reason about their behavior in a set of workflow models. Gaining insight into the usage of workflow models helps workflow management systems to improve their engine. As a case study, we use data from the ERP-company AFAS Software BV. We show that our proposed method is able to recognize a given pattern in such workflow data.