Real-time business process monitoring using formal concept analysis

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to help industrial managers monitor and analyze critical performance indicators in real time during the execution of business processes by proposing a visualization technique using an extended formal concept analysis (FCA). The proposed approach monitors the current progress of ongoing processes and periodically predicts their probable routes and performances. Design/methodology/approach - FCA is utilized to analyze relations among patterns of events in historical process logs, and this method of data analysis visualizes the relations in a concept lattice. To apply FCA to real-time business process monitoring, the authors extended the conventional concept lattice into a reachability lattice, which enables managers to recognize reachable patterns of events in specific instances of business processes. Findings - By using a reachability lattice, expected values of a target key performance indicator are predicted and traced along with probable outcomes. Analysis is conducted periodically as the monitoring time elapses over the course of business processes. Practical implications - The proposed approach focuses on the visualization of probable event occurrences on the basis of historical data. Such visualization can be utilized by industrial managers to evaluate the status of any given instance during business processes and to easily predict possible subsequent states for purposes of effective and efficient decision making. The proposed method was developed in a prototype system for proof of concept and has been illustrated using a simplified real-world example of a business process in a telecommunications company. Originality/value - The main contribution of this paper lies in the development of a real-time monitoring approach of ongoing processes. The authors have provided a new data structure, namely a reachability lattice, which visualizes real-time progress of ongoing business processes. As a result, current and probable next states can be predicted graphically using periodically conducted analysis during the processes.