Autonomous Process Execution Management Powered by Process Mining

Wil van der Aalst

Companies struggle with the complexity of their processes, and data are often scattered over many tables in different systems. In the past, automation initiatives often failed because complexity was underestimated, and it is impossible to simply replace systems based on high-level process diagrams. The same complexity makes it difficult to apply Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Yet, organizations urgently need to address their execution gaps: What do organizations expect, and what are they realistically capable of today? These gaps and their root causes can be made visible using process mining. Process Mining is currently the most concrete technology to support the vision embodied by terms such as Hyperautomation and Digital Twin of an Organization (DTO). Process mining helps to focus automation, ML, and AI initiatives. The keynote provides insights to leverage state-of-the-art process mining techniques and turn data into sustainable process improvements. To illustrate these developments, autonomous driving and the six levels defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) are used to illustrate the vision of Autonomous Process Execution Management (APEM).

Prof.dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst is a full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science (PADS) group. He is also the Chief Scientist at Celonis, part-time affiliated with the Fraunhofer FIT, and a member of the Board of Governors of Tilburg University. His research interests include process mining, Petri nets, business process management, workflow management, process modeling, and process analysis. Wil van der Aalst has published over 900 articles and books and is typically considered to be in the top-15 of most cited computer scientists with an H-index of 169 and more than 128.000 citations. Van der Aalst is an IFIP Fellow, IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow, and he received honorary degrees from the Moscow Higher School of Economics (Prof. h.c.) and Hasselt University (Dr. h.c.). He is also an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, the Academy of Europe, and the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. In 2018, he was awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship.