Comments on: Fujitsu Process Discovery

By: SAPWorld

SAPWorld — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:45:13 +0000

The really cool part of what Fujitsu is doing is introducing their ADP tool early in the blueprinting stage of their SAP implementation projects as part of their overall service to their customers. Think of it … a true before and after view of an SAP implemenatation.

By: Sandy Kemsley

Sandy Kemsley — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:42:33 +0000

Alex, I don’t think that the underlying technology is pioneered by Fujitsu, but I find their visualization and productization of it to be unique.

btw, you should be more clear with your insults: I can’t tell if you’re calling me stupid or corrupt.

By: Alex Kurvois

Alex Kurvois — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:14:30 +0000

Looks like Sandy got a hearty meal from Fujitsu! This technology has existed for more than 7 years. And Sandy thinks this is pioneering invention of Fujitsu’s.

By: Column 2 by Sandy Kemsley : BPM Milan: Supporting Flexible Processes Through Log-Based Recommendations

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:34:30 +0000

[...] This is related to the research on automated process mining (or process discovery) based on system logs, which is similar to the type of work being done by Fujitsu with their process discovery product/service [...]

By: Wil van der Aalst

Wil van der Aalst — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:12:30 +0000

I agree that qualifiers like “the world’s first” and “the leading provider of” in any vendor information should not be taken too seriously. However, it is not good if good ideas get killed because vendors are selling fake solutions.

In this context I would like to comment on Rune’s claim that ARIAS PPM is able to do this for 7 years. PPM is not able to do true process discovery! Instead PPM glues process fragments together that have been modeled before. There is always the need to use a dedicated adapter which assumes processes to have a certain structure or the processes need to be modeled by the ARIS designer. At run-time models are created by combining instance information and predefined models. Therefore, ARIS PPM cannot discover what has not been modeled before!

Yet there are many process mining techniques and tools such as ProM around that can actually discover processes without a-priori modeling. See http://www.processmining.org for more information.

By: Thilo Bischoff

Thilo Bischoff — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:34:20 +0000

ARIS PPM is really not bad. And the visualization uses the ARIS eEPC (Event Driven Process Chain). Both kinds of visualization (Fujitsu Process Discovery and ARIS PPM) are not really easy to read, but the ARIS one seems to be more systematic for me.

But the main point is, that visualization is not the BIG benefit of such a tool. “Reverse Modeling” as I want to call it is just a side effect.

The BIG win for me is the possibility to measure the process performance continuously with such a tool. But then the manual parts of the process (e.g. calculate payroll cost, plan ressource allocation…) are most important and not the IT supported parts.

These tools must enable you to add these manual activities, otherwise the benefit is low.

By: Sandy Kemsley

Sandy Kemsley — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:01:28 +0000

I just ignore qualifiers like “the world’s first” and “the leading provider of” in any vendor information, since it’s just PR spin.

Regardless, I believe that what Fujitsu is doing is different from ARIS PPM — my understanding is that PPM requires some sort of adapter to be running on the ERP or other legacy system platform in order to do process mining, whereas Fujitsu is working passively from the system logs. I haven’t seen how process mining information is presented in ARIS PPM, so can’t comment on how comparable these are.

By: Rune Becker

Rune Becker — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:14:27 +0000

The feature Fujitsu announced as “the world’s first automated busines process discovery and visualization service” (http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/www/newsdetail.shtml?nf=08390785.nitf) is already available on the market as a product for 7 years. It is a fully grown up product called ARIS Process Performance Manger (PPM) from IDS Scheer.
From its first version back in 2001 on until the current release 4.1, PPM automatically rebuilds any business process and doing that instance by instance, because every case can differ by its process flow from another. PPM can also aggregate any number of process instances and reveal repeatedly occuring process defects such as loop backs. Such deviations from the process standard are the potential for a coninuous business process improvement.
All of that process discovery (we rather call it Process Intelligence) is based on runtime data either extracted or delivered from the IT systems supporting the process execution.
And of ocurse, there is no manual process drawing needed at all, although PPM’s output is by default the industry standard for graphical process models EPC (event-driven process chain), which represents the business process flow at best.

By: Wil van der Aalst

Wil van der Aalst — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:16:50 +0000

It is nice to see that there is an increasing interest in process discovery. Note that this is a special flavor of process mining and that one can extact much more information from today’s event logs. For example, event logs contain information on the people executing activities and this may be used to build social networks. Moreover, the issue of conformance (does the model fit reality?) is vital.

Process mining techniques allow for extracting information from event logs. For example, the audit trails of a workflow management system or the transaction logs of an enterprise resource planning system can be used to discover models describing processes, organizations, and products. Moreover, it is possible to use process mining to monitor deviations (e.g., comparing the observed events with predefined models or business rules in the context of SOX).

Process mining is closely related to BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), BOM (Business Operations Management), BPI (Business Process Intelligence), and data/workflow mining. Unlike classical data mining techniques the focus is on processes and questions that transcend the simple performance-related queries supported by tools such as Business Objects, Cognos BI, and Hyperion.

By: Boudewijn van Dongen

Boudewijn van Dongen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:26:05 +0000

For those of you interested in automated process discovery, there is a very active research group in The Netherlands working on this subject for about 10 years now (www.processmining.org). In fact, many of the figures above could be produced using their open-source tool ProM and algorithms in there.