Extracting Connection Types in Process Models Discovered by Using From-to Chart Based Approach - Developing Concepts in Applied Intelligence - page 61

c. Back-tracking. Let S be an optimum activity sequence over T , a range of

activities, i.e. S

T * and A, B T . Then B backtracks A if and only if position of

A (p A ) and position of B (p B ) at S are two integers such that; p B < p A , where p A and
p B

∈ ∈

∈ [1, |S|].

2.3 Process Model Construction by Deriving AND/OR Connections

AND/OR connection type extraction handles relations of each activity type, which are
held in successor and predecessor activity list, in a pair-wise fashion. There are two
formulations for calculation connection scores with respect to the type of connections
(i.e. join or split) as stated in [13] :

⎛ B > C + C > B ⎞ ⎛ B > C + C > B ⎞

⎜ ⎜
⎝

⎟ ⎟
⎠

⎜ ⎜
⎝

⎟ ⎟
⎠

A ⇒ B ∧ C = A ⇒ B ∧ C =

(1) JOIN SPLIT

B > A + C > A A > B + A > C

While A ⇒ B

∧

C SPLIT term indicates the score of potential split-type connection
between activities B and C, which are successors of activity A, A ⇒ B

∧

C JOIN term
indicates the score of potential join-type connection between activities B and C,
which are predecessors of activity A in dependency/frequency graph.
The denominators of these formulations, |A > B| + |A > C| and |B > A| + |C > A| ,
indicate the total number of outgoing or incoming observations. The numerator, |B >
C| + |C > B| , is the number of times that activity B and C appear directly after each
other. Quantitatively connection scores, which are greater than the AND threshold,
implies an AND-connection between the related activities. Otherwise it is an
OR-connection.

3 Application of the Proposed Approach

The sample business process, which we use for illustrating the approach, consists of
ten activity types: intern repair, make ticket, arrange survey, inform client survey,
survey, repair ready, send ticket to financial admin, ready inform client, ticket ready
and first contact. Table 1 shows the initial state of FROMTOCHART table for 333 process
instances. Note that frCon activity is denoted as the initiator activity.

Table 1. Initial and Final States of FROMTOCHART Table (Element a 6,6 is set to zero due to
evalution operation).