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of food. In some countries, meat and dairy products need to be tracked from source
to sink. For example, meat products in supermarkets need to be linked to particu-
lar animals and farms. This requires the recording of events starting in the primary
sector.
The secondary sector of the economy refers to the manufacturing of tangible
products and includes the automotive industry, chemical industry, aerospace manu-
facturing, consumer electronics, etc. Organizations in the secondary sector typically
have an organizational structure covering all functional areas depicted in Fig. 11.7.
Hence, both Lasagna processes and Spaghetti processes can be encountered. An in-
teresting observation across the different industries is that most manufacturers have
become interested in monitoring their products after they have been sold. For exam-
ple, Philips Healthcare is monitoring their medical equipment while being deployed
in the field, e.g., their X-ray machines are connected to the Internet and the result-
ing logs are analyzed using ProM. The event logs of these X-ray machines provide
vital information for marketing (What kind of features do customer use?), mainte-
nance (When to service the machine?), development (Why do machines fail?), and
testing (How to test machines under realistic circumstances?). In the future, more
and more (consumer) products will be monitored remotely thus providing valuable
information for the manufacturer.
The tertiary sector of the economy consists of all organizations that produce
“intangible goods” such as services, regulations, and information. The term “ser-
vices” should be interpreted in the broadest sense including transportation, insur-
ance, wholesaling, retailing, entertainment, etc. Note that goods may be transformed
in the process of providing the service (cf. preparing food in a restaurant). However,
the focus is on serving the customer rather than transforming physical goods. In
many industries in the tertiary sector, information plays a dominant role and many
events are being recorded. This is the sector where the digital universe and the phys-
ical universe are aligned most. For example, an electronic bookstore can only sell
a book if the information system indicates that the book is present. The bookstore
would not be able to sell a particular book if the information system would indicate
that it is out-of-stock; even if the book would be physically present in the warehouse.
Process mining can be used to improve a variety of Lasagna and Spaghetti pro-
cesses encountered in the tertiary sector. Below we sketch some of the most inter-
esting industries.
• The healthcare industry includes hospitals and other care organizations. Most
events are being recorded (blood tests, MRI scans, appointments, etc.) and cor-
relation is easy because each event refers to a particular patient. The closer pro-
cesses get to the medical profession, the less structured they become. For in-
stance, most diagnosis and treatment processes tend to be rather Spaghetti-like
(see Fig. 12.1). Medical guidelines typically have little to do with the actual
processes. On the one hand, this suggests that these processes can be improved
by structuring them. On the other hand, the variability of medical processes is
caused by the different characteristics of patients, their problems, and unantici-
pated complications. Patients are saved by doctors deviating from standard pro-
cedures. However, some deviations also cost lives. Clearly, hospitals need to get a