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11.2 Use Cases 281

11.2 Use Cases

The goal of process mining is to improve operational processes. In order to judge
whether process mining efforts are successful, we need to define Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs). In Sect. 2.3.2, we identified three classes of KPIs: KPIs related to
time (e.g., lead time, service time, waiting time, and synchronization time), KPIs re-
lated to costs, and KPIs related to quality. Note that quality may refer to compliance,
customer satisfaction, number of defects, etc. To evaluate suggested improvements,
the effectiveness and efficiency of the as-is and to-be processes need to be quantified
in terms of KPIs.
For Lasagna processes, process mining can result in one or more of the following
improvement actions:
• Redesign. Insights obtained using process mining can trigger changes to the pro-
cess, e.g., sequential activities no longer need to be executed in a fixed order,
checks may be skipped for easy cases, decisions can be delegated if more than
50 cases are queueing, etc. Fraud detected using process mining may result in ad-
ditional compliance regulations, e.g., introducing the 4-eyes principle for critical
activities.
• Adjust. Similarly, process mining can result in (temporary) adjustments. For ex-
ample, insights obtained using process mining can be used to temporarily allocate
more resources to the process and to lower the threshold for delegation.
• Intervene. Process mining may also reveal problems related to particular cases or
resources. This may trigger interventions such as aborting a case that has been
queuing for more than 3 months or disciplinary measures for a worker that re-
peatedly violated compliance regulations.
• Support. Process mining can be used for operational support, e.g., based on his-
toric information a process mining tool can predict the remaining flow time or
recommend the action with the lowest expected costs.

Figure 1.3 in Chap. 1 illustrates the difference between a redesign (a permanent
change requiring alterations to software or model) and an adjustment (a temporary
change realized without modifying the underlying software or model).
As showninFig. 11.4, use cases for process mining refer to a combination of
KPIs and improvement actions. Given a Lasagna process, some typical use cases
for process mining are:
• Identification of bottlenecks to trigger a process redesign that reduces the overall
flow time with 30%.
• Identification of compliance problems using conformance checking. Some of the
compliance problems result in ad-hoc interventions whereas others lead to adjust-
ments of the parameters used for work distribution.
• Harmonization of two processes after a merger based on a comparison of the
actual processes. The goal of such a harmonization is to reduce costs.
• Predicting the remaining flow time of delayed cases to improve customer service.
• Providing recommendations for resource allocation aiming at a more balanced
utilization of workers.