Process mining and petri net synthesis

Abstract

The theory of regions and the algorithms for synthesizing a Petri net model from a transition system, which are based on this theory, have interesting practical applications - in particular in the design of electronic circuits. In this paper, we show that this theory can be also applied for mining the underlying process from the user interactions with a document management system. To this end, we combine an algorithm that we called activity mining with such Petri net synthesis algorithms. We present the basic idea of this approach, show some first results, and compare them with classical process mining techniques. The main benefit is that, in combination, the activity mining algorithm and the synthesis algorithms do not need a log of the activities, which is not available when the processes are supported by a document management system only. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.