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  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Formal Concept Analysis for Process Enhancement Based on a Pair of Perspectives</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Kyoto 606-8501</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="JP">Japan</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>In this paper, we propose to use formal concept analysis for process enhancement, which is applied to enterprise processes, e.g., operations for patients in a hospital, repair of imperfect products in a company. Process enhancement, which is one of main goals of process mining, is to analyze a process recorded in an event log, and to improve its e ciency based on the analysis. Data formats of the logs, which contain events observed from actual processes, depend on perspectives on the observation. For example, events in logs based on a so-called process perspective are represented by their types and time-stamps, and observation based on a so-called organization perspective records events with organizations relating the occurrence of them. The logs recently became large and complex, and events are represented by many features. However, previous techniques of process mining take a single perspective into account. For process enhancement, by formal concept analysis based on a pair of features from di erent perspectives, we de ne subsequences of events whose stops are fatal to execution of a process as weak points to be removed. In our method, the extent of every concept is a set of event types, and the intent is a set of resources for events in the extent, and then, for each extent, its weakness is calculated by taking into account event frequency. We also propose some basic ideas to remove the weakest points.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>formal concept analysis</kwd>
        <kwd>process mining</kwd>
        <kwd>business process improvement</kwd>
        <kwd>event log</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>-</title>
      <p>In this paper, we show a new application of formal concept analysis, process
enhancement (or business process improvement), which is one of main goals of
process mining. We show that formal concepts are useful to discover weak points
of processes, and that a formal concept lattice works as a good guide to remove
the weak points in the process enhancement.</p>
      <p>Formal concept analysis (FCA for short) is a data analysis method which
focuses on relationship between a set of objects and a set of attributes in data. A
concept lattice, which is an important product of FCA, gives us valuable insights
from a dual viewpoint based on the objects and the attributes. Moreover, because
of its simple and strong de nition, various types of data can be translated for
FCA, and so FCA attracts attention across various research domains.</p>
      <p>
        Process mining [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13 ref9">9,13</xref>
        ] is a relatively young research domain, and is researched
for treating enterprise processes recorded in event logs, e.g., operations for
patients in a hospital, repair of imperfect products in a company. It provides a
bridge between business process management (BPM for short) [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ] and data
mining. BPM has been investigated pragmatically, and data formats, softwares,
and management systems are proposed for manipulating processes. Like recent
data represented as \big data", the event logs also became huge and complicated.
Thus, BPM researchers need theoretically e cient approaches for handling such
big data. This is also the recent trend of data mining. Though many results
produced in the last decade of process mining, there are still many challenges [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
        ],
and we work with FCA on two of them: \combining process mining with other
types of analysis" and \dealing with complex event logs having diverse
characteristics". We treat business process improvement which is an essential goal of
process mining as a application of FCA. In order to achieve it, so many matters
should be considered. At rst, we have to decide features of a process which are
modi ed for improvement, and there are various types of features to represent
the process. In order to categorize the features, six central perspectives have been
proposed [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4 ref8">4, 8</xref>
        ]. For improvement in the target features, many modi cations can
be constructed. According to [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref8">8</xref>
        ], there are 43 patterns of the modi cations. We
also have to evaluate the improvement, so an improvement measure is needed for
the evaluation. Based on principal aspects of processes, time, quality, cost, and
exibility, four types of measures are considered [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4 ref8">4, 8</xref>
        ]. In this paper, for making
a process robust and reliable, we focus on two of the perspectives to detecting
weak points of the process which are subsequences of events. For the detection,
our method calculated a weakness degree regarded as one of cost measures for
each subsequence which is represented by the extent of a formal concept.
      </p>
      <p>This paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we introduce process
mining and give a running example, and then, we show the problem tackled in
this paper. In Section 3, we explain our process enhancement method.
Conclusions are placed in Section 4.
2</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>Process Mining</title>
      <p>In this section, we outline process mining with an example and show the problem
which we try to solve.
2.1</p>
      <sec id="sec-2-1">
        <title>Event Logs Observed from Actual Processes</title>
        <p>
          Process mining has three types: process discovery, process conformance
checking, and process model enhancement. Every type strongly focuses on and starts
from facts observed from actual processes. It is the main di erence from BPM
(Business Process Management) [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
          ] and also from WFM (Work ow
Management) [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
          ]. They are past elds of process mining and rely on prior knowledge.
The observed facts are recorded in event logs, and so the logs are the most
important materials in process mining.
        </p>
        <p>
          Actual event logs are usually represented in a semi-structured format like
MXML [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref15">15</xref>
          ] and XES [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
          ]. Theoretically, every event log can be simply
formalized as a pair (F; E) of a nite set F of features and a nite set E of events.
Every feature f 2 F is a function from E to its domain Df , and every event
e 2 E is recorded in the form of (f1(e); f2(e); :::; fjF j(e)) in QjiF=j1 Dfi . Each
event corresponds with an occurrence or a task which are found by observation
of an actual process. The observation is performed based on perspectives, and
the set of features is decided by depending on them. Mathematically, a set P
of the perspectives satis es that every perspective p 2 P is a non-empty subset
of F . Though six central perspectives which are called process, object,
organization, informatics, IT application, or environment are proposed [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4 ref8">4, 8</xref>
          ], there are
no standards for deciding P should be adopted in the observation. The set of
perspectives P varies from an observation to another based on aims of process
mining, kinds of processes executed by organizations, sensor systems installed
to organizations, and many other factors. There are however some
fundamental perspectives which are currently adopted in construction of event logs. Our
approach focuses on two of these. One of them is the process perspective (it is
sometimes called a control- ow perspective), which is focusing on how process
occurs. If a process is observed based on the perspective, the set of features in
its event log must include an event type feature, a time stamp feature, and a case
feature. The case feature makes clear which case each event occurs in (note that
some researches regard the case feature as a feature based on another
perspective, a case perspective). Based on such a perspective, event logs clarify ordering
of events for each case, and the set E of events can be treated as a partially
ordered set (E; ), so we sometimes use E as the poset (E; ) in this paper. A
sequence of events occurring in a case which are ordered based on time is called
a trace. At the same time, the process can be observed based on the organization
perspective, which is another fundamental perspective. The perspective focuses
on where the occurrence happens or who performs the task, and event logs based
on it must have a place feature, a resource feature, or an employee feature. In
this paper, we assume that a given event log records statistically enough events.
Example 1 As a running example, we show a process which is handling a
request for compensation within an airline. Customers may request the airline to
compensate for various reasons, e.g., delay of ight or its cancelation. In such
situations, the airline has to examine the validity of the request and needs to pay
compensation if it is unquestionable. Table 1 shows an event log recording the
compensation process which is partially quoted from [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
          ]. In this example, an
event means a task executed by an employee: the rst event in the table shows
that a task called \register request" is executed as the beginning of Case 1 by
Pete at 11:02 on 30 Dec., 2010. In this log, the features Case ID, Event type,
and Time are based on the process perspective. Resource feature is based on
the organization perspective and represents human resources needed for each of
the event. Cost feature comes from another perspective. The log also shows that
three cases are observed and recorded as three traces, and that their length are
5, 5, and 9, respectively.
2.2
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-2">
        <title>Models of Processes</title>
        <p>
          Models of processes are also important in process mining because they are deeply
related with the three types of process mining: models are extracted from event
logs by the process discovery, they are used with event logs for the process
conformance checking and for the process model enhancement. Note that di erent
types of models can be considered, and have been researched because of
various aims of mining. Some models have been proposed for extract procedure of
processes, e.g., Petri net [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">16</xref>
          ], Business process modeling notation (BPMN) [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
          ],
Event-driven process chain (EPC) [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
          ], and UML activity diagram [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
          ]. These
procedure models express work ow of a process clearly as directed graphs. For
another aim, expressing how resources are involved in a process or how resources are
related with each other, social network models are proposed [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10 ref14">10, 14</xref>
          ]. A
workingtogether social network expresses relations among resources which are used in
the same case. A similar-task social network ignores cases but focuses on
relations among resources used together for the same event. A handover-of-work
social network expresses handovers from resources to resources in cases.
        </p>
        <p>All of these models are developed for expression, and do not provide any
analytical function. In other words, they only push event logs into their format,
start register request</p>
        <p>check ticket
examine casually
examine thoroughly
decide
reinitiate request
reject request
pay compensation
end
and analysis is not their duty. However, for process enhancement, we need some
analytical function for evaluating the enhancement. In addition, models focusing
on one perspective are apt to neglect other perspectives. For example, the
procedure models focusing on the process perspective do not contain information
about resources which are observed based on the organization perspective. On
the contrary, the social networks focusing on the organization perspective make
correlations among resources explicit but make work ows which are observed
based on the process perspective unclear. For our goal, detecting weak points of
a process, we claim that its weakness should be measured based on at least two
perspectives. This work thus relates to process model enhancement which is to
extend a process model.</p>
        <p>
          Example 2 Figure 1 shows a procedure model which is expressed in terms of
a Petri net [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">16</xref>
          ] extracted from the event log shown in Table 1. This model
explicitly expresses the work ow of the compensation process and makes it clear
which event happens before/after another event. On the other hand, the model
ignores other perspectives: information derived from Resource and Cost features
are not expressed at all in the model. Figure 2 shows a similar-task social network
[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10 ref14">10, 14</xref>
          ] generated from the same event log. This model clari es relations among
employees sharing the same tasks, but it does not care about the ordering of
events.
2.3
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-3">
        <title>Weak Points Detection for Process Enhancement</title>
        <p>Our nal goal is process enhancement. For the goal, we propose to detect
subsequences of events from a given event log as weak points which should be removed.
Actually, our method does not decide whether or not subsequences of events are
weak points. Instead, the method estimates the weakness for each of some
subsequences of events and expresses it in a number called a weakness degree. Then,
some weaker subsequence of events should be removed for the enhancement.</p>
        <p>For the de nition of the weakness degree, there are various candidates. If the
process perspective is focused, sequences of events taking a lot of time in a process
must be its weak points. Another type of weak points are looping sequences which</p>
        <p>Mike</p>
        <p>Sean
Ellen</p>
        <p>Sue
Pete</p>
        <p>Sara
many cases have to take. In the running example, it is reasonable to take costs
of events into account for weakness. In this work, we focus on importance of
a subsequence of events and loads of it. The importance is decided based on
the process perspective and on the organization perspective. More precisely, a
subsequence of events in an event log is considerable if the events are executed
by a small number of resources in the log. Loads of the important sequence
increase if the sequence appears many times in the log. In our method, important
sequences of events having heavy loads are weak points of a process.
Example 3 In the running example, the subsequence \decide" executed by Sara
should be regarded as weaker than the others. Because the subsequence is
important due to the fact that it can be executed only by Sara, and because the event,
\decide" by Sara, is very frequent. Only from the Petri net shown in Figure 1,
it can be induced that the event \decide" is important in the process. It is also
induced only from the social network shown in Figure 2 that Sara takes some
important role. However, these models do not show explicitly that \decide" by
Sara is important and has an impact on the process.
3</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>Process Enhancement via FCA</title>
      <p>
        We adopt FCA for mining weak points of processes, so we rstly introduce the
de nitions of formal concepts and formal concept lattices with referring to [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref5">1, 5</xref>
        ].
Then, we explain our method.
3.1
      </p>
      <sec id="sec-3-1">
        <title>From an Event Log to a Concept Lattice</title>
        <p>A formal context is a triplet K = (G; M; I) where G and M are mutually
disjoint nite sets, and I G M . Each element of G is called an object,
and each element of M is called an attribute. For a subset of objects A G
and a subset of attributes B M of a formal context K, we de ne AI =
f m 2 M j 8g 2 A: (g; m) 2 I g, BI = f g 2 G j 8m 2 B: (g; m) 2 I g, and a pair
(A; B) is a formal concept if AI = B and A = BI . For a formal concept
c = (A; B), A and B are called the extent and the intent, respectively, and
let Ex(c) = A and In(c) = B. For arbitrary formal concepts c and c0, we de ne
an order c c0 i Ex(c) Ex(c0) (or equally In(c) In(c0)). The set of all
formal concepts of a context K = (G; M; I) with the order is denoted by
B(G; M; I) (for short, B(K)) and is called the formal concept lattice (concept
lattice for short) of K. For every object g 2 G of (G; M; I), the formal concept
(f g gII ; f g gI ) is called the object concept and denoted by g. Similarly, for
every attribute m 2 M , the formal concept (f m gI ; f m gII ) is called the attribute
concept and denoted by m.</p>
        <p>
          In our method, a formal context is obtained by translation from an event
log, and then weak point mining is performed with a concept lattice constructed
from the context. Suppose that the event log consists of two types of features,
one of them is based on the process perspective, and that the other is based on
the organization perspective. In this paper, the rst one is called an event-type
feature and is denoted by fe, and the second is called a resource feature and is
denoted by fr. Note that the event-type feature represents types of events, not
cases, and not time. This assumption is not strong because such features are very
fundamental and are adopted in XES [
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
          ] in fact. From such an event log L =
(F; E) that F f fe; fr g, a formal context KL = (G; M; I) is translated where
G = Dfe , M = Dfr , I = f (g; m) 2 G M j 9e 2 E:fe(e) = g ^ fr(e) = m g.
In the context KL = (G; M; I), (g; m) 2 I means that events sorted into g
need a resource m. For every element (g; m) 2 I of the formal context KL, we
additionally de ne
        </p>
        <p>freq((g; m)) = j f e 2 E j fe(e) = g ^ fr(e) = m g j:
This function outputs frequency of events which are sorted into an event-type g
and need resource m in the event log L.</p>
        <p>Example 4 In the running example, \Event type" corresponds to the
eventtype feature, and \Resource" corresponds to the resource feature. Therefore, a
formal context KL = (G; M; I) shown in Table 2 is obtained from the event log
shown in Table 1. For example, freq((register request; Pete)) = 2 shows that an
event \register request" by Pete is observed twice in construction of the event
log in Table 1.</p>
        <p>From a formal context KL translated from an event log L, a concept lattice
B(KL) is constructed for process enhancement. Each formal concept c = (A; B)
of the concept lattice B(KL) represents a pair of a set A of event-types and a
set B of resources needed for events in A. For every formal concept c 2 B(KL),
we de ne
By extending freq for I, we also de ne</p>
        <p>Ex (c) = f g 2 Ex(c) j g = c g ; and
In (c) = f m 2 In(c) j</p>
        <p>m = c g :
freq(c) =</p>
        <p>X</p>
        <p>X
g2Ex(c) m2In(c)
freq((g; m)):</p>
        <p>register request
examine throughly
check ticket</p>
        <p>decide
reject request
examine casually
pay compensation
reinitiate request</p>
        <p>Pete Sue Mike Sara Sean Ellen
2 1
1
1
1
2
1
4
1
1
1
1
2
The value freq(c) is the sum of frequencies of events which are sorted into an
event-type g 2 Ex(c) and need a resource m 2 In(c).</p>
        <p>Example 5 Figure 3 shows a concept lattice B(KL) of the context KL =
(G; M; I) shown in Table 2. For example, the left most circle in the gure
indicates a formal concept c2 = (f check ticket; pay compensation g ; f Ellen g). The
sum of frequencies freq(c2) = 3 means that a task \check ticket" or \pay
compensation" executed by Ellen appears three times in the event log L shown in
Table 1.
3.2</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-2">
        <title>Calculating Weakness Degrees</title>
        <p>As we mentioned in Section 2.3, for every subsequence of events which is the
extent of a formal concept, we de ne the weakness degree, and the weakness is
estimated from its importance and its loads.</p>
        <p>The importance is estimated based on both of the process perspective and
the organization perspective. Every formal concept (A; B) 2 B(KL) is based
on both of the perspectives because A is a set of event-types observed from the
process perspective and B is a set of resources observed from the organization
perspective. Such a formal concept is considered to represent that accomplishing
all the events in A needs at least one of the resources in B and that every
resource in B can execute all the events in A. From this consideration, we de ne
the importance imp(c) of the subsequence Ex(c) of a formal concept c 2 B(KL)
as
imp(c) =
1 + jEx (c)j
1 + jIn(c)j
1 + jEx(c)j
1 + jIn (c)j
:
We call this an importance factor. Roughly speaking, this factor becomes large
when a small number of resources are needed for a large number of events. The
rst term means the ratio of the number of events to the number of resources
which can accomplish the events. In other words, if some or many events rely on
register request
examine thoroughly
check ticket
decide
freq = 0 reexjaemctinreeqcuaessutally
imp = 9 c1 rpeaiynictoiamtepreenqsuaetisotn
weak = 0
firmepq == 24 c3 register request</p>
        <p>Pete
weak 0.42 rcehjeecckt rtiecqkueetst
firmepq == 14 c4 register request</p>
        <p>Mike
weak 0.21 cehxaemckintieckcaestually
impfr=eq2=.255 c5 Sara
weak 0.59 rdeeicniidtieate request
imfrpeq= =1.53 c2 check ticket</p>
        <p>Ellen
weak 0.24 pay compensation</p>
        <p>Pete
firmepq == 26 c Mike
weak 0.63 6 crehgeicsktetricrkeeqtuest</p>
        <p>Pete</p>
        <p>Mike
firmepq == 14 c Ellen
weak 0.21 8 check ticket
wiemapkfreq10=..31234 c9 eSMxeiaaknmeine casually
imwpfereaqk0==.1004 c11 SSMauirkeae</p>
        <p>Pete
Sean
Ellen
impfr=eq0=.752 c Sean
weak 0.08 7 eexxaammiinnee tchaosuroaullgyhly</p>
        <p>Sue
impfreq0=.627 c10 eSxeaanmine thoroughly
weak 0.07
little resources then the term is large. The second means the ratio of the number
of resources to the number of events which are executed by the resources. It
becomes large, if some or little resources are exhausted by many events. Also,
we de ne load(c) of the subsequence Ex(c) as
load(c) =
freq(c)
jEj
and call it a load factor. This is a ratio of frequency of events in the sequence
Ex(c) to frequency of the whole events E. Then, for the subsequence Ex(c), the
weakness degree weak(c) is de ned as
weak(c) = imp(c)
load(c):
When an important sequence Ex(c) takes a heavy load, weak(c) becomes large.
In other words, the weakness degree numerically shows liableness of trouble
with Ex(c) to cause the whole process down. By extending this de nition, the
weakness of the whole process can be expressed as Pc2B(KL) weak(c).
Example 6 In Figure 3, importance factors and weakness degrees of every
subsequence of events Ex(c), c 2 B(KL) are also drawn. The importance factors
show that the sequence of tasks Ex(c5) = f decide; reinitiate request g executed
by Sara is the most important. Indeed, there is no employee who can execute the
tasks \decide" and \reinitiate request", but Sara. On the other hand, the
weakness degrees show that the sequence Ex(c6) = f register request; check ticket g of
tasks is the weakest, and that the most important sequence Ex(c5) is the
secondary weakest. This reversal of roles is caused by their load factors. The total
weakness of the whole process Pc2B(KL) weak(c) is around 2:59.
3.3</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-3-3">
        <title>Removing Weak Points</title>
        <p>A process recorded in an event log L can be enhanced by removing the
weakest point or by reducing the total weakness Pc2B(KL) weak(c). Though there
are many ways for achieving the enhancement, in this paper, we achieve it by
operations to an original formal context KL = (G; M; I) which remove some
weakest formal concepts from its concept lattice B(KL), or which totally reduce
Pc2B(KL) weak(c). We here show some basic ideas for such operations.</p>
        <p>Observing the de nitions about the weakness shows that there are three
plans for the reduction: reducing importance factors, reducing load factors, and
decreasing the number of formal concepts. Though there are many operations
achieving the plans, realizable operations are restricted by considering that we
try to manage an actual enterprise process. Reduction of importance factors
can be achieved by increasing the number of resources to the number of events
requiring the resources. Also, reducing events can decrease importance factors,
but we do not adopt this way because it has a risk that the process never
works. In other words, we try to enhance processes by investment in equipment
not by polishing processes. Besides, reducing load factors is not reasonable for
our method, because we do not have control of frequency of events. Thus, our
enhancement operations are to increase resources for events requiring them or
to decrease formal concepts.</p>
        <p>For enhancement of a process recorded in an event log L, we show two kinds of
such operations. The rst kind is adding (g; m) 2= I such that g 2 Ex(c) and m 2
M to I for removing a formal concept c from B(KL) 3 c. This means to expand
exibility of resources, e.g., updating machines, and expanding applicability of
materials by an innovation. We have to note that the total weakness is not always
reduced in this case. The second is adding m such that m 2= M and (g; m) 2= I
such that g 2 Ex(c) to M and I, respectively. This can reduce the total weakness
Pc2B(KL) weak(c). This means introducing new resources for sequences of events
Ex(c). For example, purchase of the same machines as existing ones, and using a
substitute to make up a shortage of materials. In order to decide properly which
kind of operations is executed, we need other factors, e.g., execution time of the
process, or costs and easiness of applying the operations.
Example 7 In the running example, there are some choices for removing the
weakest sequence Ex(c6) = f register ticket; check ticket g. For example, addition
of (register request; Ellen) to I which means that Ellen gets an ability to
\register request" can remove the weak point. It removes the concept c6, changes
c2 into (f register request; check ticket; pay compensation g ; f Ellen g), and c8 into
(f register request; check ticket g ; f Pete; Mike; Ellen g), respectively. If we assume
that \register request" is shared equally by Pete, Mike, and Ellen, the
numbers are changed: freq(c2) = 4, imp(c2) = 2, weak(c2) ; 0:42, freq(c3) = 3,
imp(c3) = 2, weak(c3) ; 0:32, freq(c8) = 7, imp(c8) = 2:25, weak(c8) ; 0:83. In
this case, the total weakness increases to around 2.66. Employing a new person,
Bob, having ability to execute \register request" is an operations of the second
type. This is to add Bob 2= M to M and to add (register request; Bob) 2= I to I.
In this case, a new concept c12 = (f register request g ; f Bob g) is generated, and
then, the total weakness decrease to 2.17 by assuming that \register request" is
shared equally by Pete, Mike, and Bob. Because weak(c3) and weak(c6) decrease
to around 0.32 and around 0.26, respectively, and weak(c12) ; 0:05.
4</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>Conclusions</title>
      <p>In this paper, we propose to apply FCA (formal concept analysis) to process
enhancement. FCA is to analyze data from a dual viewpoint which is based on
objects and attributes. Processes are recorded in event logs which are constructed
by observation based on some perspectives. We assign a pair of the process
perspective and the organization perspective to the objects and the attributes
of FCA in order to investigate weak points of a process. Weakness of a sequence
of events executed by resources is calculated by importance and loads of it.</p>
      <p>There are many problems to be solved. Our weakness of process is not de ned
from enough analysis because only two features from two perspectives are
considered. For improving a process more e ciently, we need to take into account
other features across other perspectives in weak point detection. For example,
using a time-stamp feature enables us to detect bottleneck of a process, using
a cost feature enables us to nd costly sequences. It may be achieved by
combining other process models with our concept lattice. We also have to re ne the
operations for removing weak points. In our method, the number of the choices
for enhancement sometimes becomes so large. A plan of the re nement is to
estimate in advance the total weakness of a reinforced process for each of the
choices. Combining other models is also useful. For example, combining
procedure models with our method can suggest some e ective operations from the
many choices. Because such models su ciently treat order of events in traces
which is ignored by our lattice based approach. On the other hand, there are
many constraints on resources in practical processes, e.g., some materials can be
substituted few materials but the others can not, and employees are divided into
groups in a company. In order to reduce the choices based on such constrains,
social network models might be useful.</p>
      <sec id="sec-4-1">
        <title>Acknowledgment</title>
        <p>This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 26280085.</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
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