Object-Centric Process Mining: Unraveling the Fabric of Real Processes

Traditional approaches for process modeling and process analysis tend to focus on one type of object (also referred to as cases or instances), and each event refers to precisely one such object. This simplifies modeling and analysis, e.g., a process model merely describes the lifecycle of one object (e.g., a production order or an insurance claim) in terms of its activities (i.e., event types). However, in reality, there are often multiple objects of different types involved in an event. Think about filling out an electronic form referring to one order, one customer, ten items, three shipments, and one invoice. Object-centric process mining (OCPM) takes a more holistic and more comprehensive approach to process analysis and improvement by considering multiple object types and events that involve any number of objects. This paper introduces object-centric event data (OCED) and shows how these can be used to discover, analyze, and improve the fabric of real-life, highly intertwined processes. This tutorial-style paper presents the basic concepts, object-centric process-mining techniques, examples, and formalizes OCED. Fully embracing object centricity provides organizations with a "three-dimensional" view of their processes, showing how they interact with each other, and where the root causes of performance and compliance problems lie.