CFP

We would like to invite researchers and practitioners to submit papers for a special issue of Computers in Industry (http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/compind) on Workflow mining. The deadline for contributions is February 1st 2003.

GUEST EDITORS:

Wil van der Aalst, Eindhoven University of Technology, w.m.p..v.d.aalst@tm.tue.nl

Ton Weijters, Eindhoven University of Technology, a.j.m.m.weijters@tm.tue.nl

SCOPE:

During the last decade workflow management concepts and technology have been applied in many enterprise information systems. Workflow management systems such as Staffware, IBM MQSeries, COSA, etc. offer generic modeling and enactment capabilities for structured business processes. By making formal process definitions, i.e., models describing the life-cycle of a typical case (workflow instance) in isolation, one can configure these systems to support business processes. Besides pure workflow management systems, many other software systems have adopted workflow technology. Consider for example ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Baan and Oracle, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, etc. which embed workflow technology.

Despite its promise, many problems are encountered when applying workflow technology. One of the problems is that these systems require a workflow design, i.e., a designer has to construct a detailed model accurately describing the routing of work. Modeling a workflow is far from trivial: It requires deep knowledge of the business process and lengthy discussions with the workers and management involved.

Workflow mining is an approach to reverse the process and collect data at runtime to support workflow design and analysis. Note that in most cases, prior to the deployment of a workflow system, the workflow was already there. Also, note that in most information systems transactional data is registered (consider for example the transaction logs of ERP systems like SAP). The information collected at run-time can be used to derive a model explaining the events recorded. Such a model can be used in both the diagnosis phase and the (re)design phase. In contrast to a normal design which is often subjective and based on perceptions and opinions, mining is objective because it is based on the actual things that took place.

The idea of process mining is not new but a lot of work is limited to only sequential behavior. We are particularly interested in the mining of real workflows in which events can be processed in parallel (so called concurrent processes). Therefore, this special issue will focus on the state-of-the-art developments in the domain of concurrent-workflow mining. We are especially interested in practical applications of workflow-mining techniques.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
1. Theoretical foundations and algorithms.
2. Practical examples of how workflow-mining techniques can be used during the design of a workflow.
3. Practical examples of how workflow-mining techniques can be used to create a feedback loop to adapt the workflow model to changing circumstances and detect imperfections of the design.
4. How to deal with noise and imperfect information.
5. Which information is necessary / useful for workflow mining?
6. Measurements to compare the modeling quality of different workflow models.

TARGET DATES:

Submission deadline: 01-02-2003
Acceptance notification: 01-04-2003
Final Papers: 01-05-2003

PAPER SUBMISSION INSTRUCTION:

See http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/compind under Guide for Authors .

MORE INFORMATION:
For more information, see http://www.tm.tue.nl/it/staff/wvdaalst/workflow/mining/cfp.html or contact one of the guest editors:

Prof. Dr. Ir. Wil van der Aalst / Dr. Ton Weijters
Eindhoven University of Technology
Faculty of Technology and Management
Department of Information and Technology
PO Box 513
NL-5600 MB Eindhoven
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 40 247.2290
Fax: +31 40 243.2612
E-mail: w.m.p.v.d.aalst@tm.tue.nl / a.j.m.m.weijters@tm.tue.nl