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290 11 Analyzing “Lasagna Processes”

better understanding of care processes to be able to improve them. Process mining
can help as event data is readily available [64].
• Governments range from small municipalities to large organizations operating at
the national level, e.g., institutions managing processes related to unemployment,
customs, taxes, and traffic offences. Both local and national government agen-
cies can be seen as “administrative factories” as they execute regulations and the
“products” are mainly informational or financial. Processes in larger government
agencies are characterized by a high degree of automation. Consider, for exam-
ple, tax departments that need to deal with millions of tax declarations. Processes
in smaller government agencies (e.g., small municipalities) are typically not au-
tomated and managed by office workers rather than BPM systems. However, due
to the legal requirements, all main events are recorded in a systematic manner.
Consider, for example, the WMO process shown in Fig. 11.2; any municipality in
The Netherlands is obliged to record the formal steps in such processes. Typical
use cases for process mining in governments (local or non-local) are flow time
reduction (e.g., shorten the time to get a building permit), improved efficiency,
and compliance. Given the role of governments in society, compliance is of the
utmost importance.
• Banking and insurance are two industries where BPM technology has been most
effective. Processes are often automated and all events are recorded in a sys-
tematic and secure manner. Examples are the processing of loans, claims man-
agement, handling insurance applications, credit card payments, and mortgage
payments. Most processes in banking and insurance are Lasagna processes, i.e.,
highly structured. Hence, all of the techniques presented in this book can be ap-
plied. Process discovery is less relevant for these organizations as most processes
are known and documented. Typical uses cases in these industries involve con-
formance checking, performance analysis, and operational support.
• Organizations involved in education (e.g., high-schools and universities) are
recording more and more information related to the study behavior of individ-
uals. For instance, at TU/e we are applying process mining to analyze study be-
havior using a database containing detailed information about exam results of all
students that ever studied computer science. Moreover, this database also con-
tains information about high-school exam grades, etc. Some of these educational
processes are structured, others are very unstructured. For example, it is very dif-
ficult to predict the remaining study time of students at a university because the
curriculum often changes and students tend to have very different study patterns.
Nevertheless, valuable insights can be obtained. By visualizing that few students
follow the courses in the order intended, one can show that the design of a cur-
riculum should not only focus on the “ideal student” (that passes all courses the
first time), but also anticipate problems encountered by other students.
• The products manufactured by organizations in the secondary sector are dis-
tributed through various retail organizations. Here it is interesting to see that more
and more information about products and customers is being recorded. Customers
are tracked using loyalty cards or through online profiles. Products are tagged
and the shop has real-time information about the number of items still available.