Process Mining for Sustainability

ReThink you Processes!
A Systematic Literature Review on Process Mining for
Sustainability
Nina Graves, István Koren, Wil M. P. van der Aalst
Chair of Process and Data Science, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
9th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S 2023)
Rennes, 8th June 2023
© Nina Graves (acknowledge when used)

Process Mining

Nina Graves, Process Mining for Sustainability
International Conference on ICT for Sustainability
3
Definition and Example of a Process
1Dumas et al., Fundamentals of Business Process Management (2018)
2van der Aalst, Wil M. P. Process Mining (2016)
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Assemble
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payment
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Register Interrelated activities performed according to
certain rules to achieve a specific outcome1.

4
Processes can be modelled in different ways – for example as BPMN model or Petri net
R PI
B
PN
A PK
PY
D
Petri Net
BPMN

5
Working with Event Data enables the Analysis of the Process as it really occurs.
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Assemble
pick
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Activities are supported by IT-Systems that log
what happens in an event log.
Event: Specific execution of an activity
Process execution: Sequence of events2
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6
Working with Event Data enables the Analysis of the Process as it really occurs.
Build
Assemble
pick
Pick
Paint
Pack Deliver
Register
Activities are supported by IT-Systems that log
what happens in an event log.
Event: Specific execution of an activity
Process execution: Sequence of events2
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Order 5-9-jun
Order ren-nes
Process Mining aims to improve
operational processes through the
systematic use of event data.
van der Aalst, Wil M. P. (2022) Process Mining: A 360 Degree Overview

7
Process Mining is a toolkit to turn event data into process models, insights,
improvement strategies and eventually actions.
Real-life Processes
IT-Systems
Event
Data
extract
explore
select,
filter
clean
Process
Model
discover
show
model
adapt
Conformance
Performance
Diagnostics
align
replay
enrich
Predictions
Improvements
ML
apply
compare
show Interpret
drill down
act
transform

8
The six main areas of Process Mining.
Real-life Processes
IT-Systems
Event
Data
extract
explore
select,
filter
clean
Process
Model
discover
show
model
adapt
Conformance
Performance
Diagnostics
align
replay
enrich
Predictions
Improvements
ML
apply
compare
show Interpret
drill down
act
transform
Process Discovery
Performance Analysis
Conformance Checking
Comparative PM
Predictive PM
Action-oriented PM

Sustainable Development

10
The Global Society has decided to pursue Sustainable Development.
1 UN World Commission on Environment and Development, Our common future (1987).
2 Elkington, John. Cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of 21st century business (1998).
3 UN General Assembly, Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015).
Environmental Quality
Social Equity
Economic Prosperity
Increase Performance
Strengthen markets
Increase human well-being
Develop Societies
Strengthen societies
Regenerate nature
Circulate products and materials
Eliminate waste and pollution
Agenda 20303
• UN developed 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets
• All members of the UN agreed to pursue their achievement
Pillars of Sustainable Development2
Sustainable Development describes “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs”1

11
The Circular Economy is a widely recognised Approach towards
Sustainable Development.
The Circular Economy is a “system in which resource input, waste, emission, and energy leakage are
minimised by slowing, closing and narrowing material and energy loops.”1
1 Geissdoerfer, Martin. The Circular Economy – A new sustainability paradigm? (2017).
2 Reike, Denise et al. The circular economy: New or Refurbished as CE 3.0? [..] (2017).
3 Achterberg, Elisa, Master Circular Business with the Value Hill (2016).
The R-imperatives2,3
ADD
VALUE
DESTROY
VALUE
Extraction
Manufacturing
Assembly
Retail
User
Pre-use Post-use
Use
ADD
VALUE
RETAIN
VALUE
Repair/Maintain
Reuse/resell
Refurbish
Remanufacture
Recycle
Repurpose
Refuse
Reduce
Different Product
Recover
Re-mine
Linear Economy Circular Economy

Process Mining and
Motivation

13
How a Business Process related to Sustainable Development?
1Dumas et al., Fundamentals of Business Process Management (2018)
2van der Aalst, Wil M. P. Process Mining (2016)
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Business Processes are strongly intertwined
with economic prosperity, social equity and
environmental quality!
Equipment
Sell Material/Products
Employees
Energy
Resources & Waste
Emissions

14
The Connection has been recognised in Academia and Industry.
Process Mining can support the assessment of a
product’s impact on the environment.
Ortmeier et al. (2021)
BPM is crucial to organisation’s transition
to sustainable development.
Seidel et al. (2012)
PM is a good auxiliary tool to
support Carbon assessment.
Brehm et al. (2022)
“Process Mining can support a sustainability
revolution”.
Reinkemeyer (2022)
• In 2016, industrial processes and transportation were responsible for 45.6% of global emissions1
• To achieve SD organisations have to realign their business models2, supply chains3 and organisational
practices4
1 Ritchie, Hannah et al. CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions (Our Wold in Data) (2020).
2 Bocken, Nancy et al. Product design and business model strategies for a circular economy (2016).
3 Geissdoerfer, Martin et al. Business models and supply chains for the circular economy (2018).
4 Ghisellini, Patrizia, A review on circular economy: the expected transition to a balanced interplay of environmental and economic systems (2016).
© Nina Graves

16
With the help of two Systematic Literature Reviews and the Analysis of the
capabilities of Process Mining we consider how PM can support SD.
But how?!?!
Most literature describes conceptual approaches and
refer to including sustainability aspects in modelling.
Fritsch et al. (2022) - Review on Green BPM
How can PM contribute to increasing sustainable development?
How does PM have to be applied to be able to support sustainable development?
What further Research is needed?

17
Processes that must be made more efficient, be transformed and newly introduced to
achieve a Circular Economy.
Make
Manufacture Assemble Distribute
Use
Maintain
R3: Repair
Source
Source Energy/Material
…
R2: Reuse
R4: Refurbish
R5: Remanufacture
R7: Recycle
R6: Repurpose
R8: Recover
R9: Re-mine
…
Reverse Logistics
Different Supply Chain

Process Mining and
Methodology

19
After a broad Literature Reviews on PM and SD, a more targeted, review on PM and
the CE and Environmental Quality is conducted. Finally, a Framework is proposed.
PM for Sustainable Development
PM for the Circular
Economy
Framework: PM4S
Systematic Literature Review Systematic Literature Review Derived from Results
• PM in the broad context of
sustainable development
• Contributions assigned to the
pillars of SD
• Summary of results
• Targeted review on PM and the
circular economy (CE)
• Assessing the considered
processes
• Application of PM techniques for
the objectives of the CE
• Collection of mentioned
contributions
• Analysis of the perspectives that
have to be included
• Framework for basic
sustainability assessment

20
Methodology of the two Systematic Literature Reviews after Kitchenham (2007).
Scopus Web of Science ACM Google Scholar IEEE Xplore Science Direct
• sustainability
• sustainable development
• Circular economy
• Environmental quality
• Life cycle assessment
• Ecological, ecology, eco-friendly
• Green, emissions, carbon, energy
• Waste, resource efficiency
Search
Process Mining and.. Search Term SLR-2
Search Terms SLR-1
1
No Conference Reviews
Language: English Language: German No Forewords
SLR-1 SLR-2
Refers to process mining or the analysis of event data
SD or any of their pillars as motivation, potential benefit or
subject of analysis.
Sustainability only in metadata.
Other understandings of “process mining”.
(1) Minimisation of emissions, physical waste, energy or
resource utilisation or (2) considering circularity.
No consideration of environmental sustainability.
Criteria applied to all full texts Criteria applied first to abstracts, then full texts
Select
2
Expand
3 Comb through related work of included literature and search for work fulfilling the above-mentioned criteria.
General and environmental-related literature of SLR-1.

Process Mining and
Results Systematic Literature Reviews

22
SLR-1: The application of Process Mining for the Environmental Pillar of Sustainable
Development appears least developed yet full of potential.
1 UNEP, Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products and organisations 2020 (2020)
Environmental Quality
Social Equity
Economic Prosperity
• Monitoring Compliance to SD targets
• Reducing factors with negative impact
• Increasing digitalisation & efficient resource utilisation
• Regular assessment & analysis
• Compliance checks
• Decision support
Sustainability
(general)
Four publications
Five publications*
• Mostly Case Studies
• Increasing performance and
strengthening markets
• Core processes
• Process monitoring
• Performance analysis
• Bottlenecks, root-cause analysis,
automation
• PM on specific domains
• Organisational Perspective
• Responsible PM
• Processes not that large impact1
• Prominent for macro level
• Health and Safety, Education,
Societal infrastructure
• Mainly one-time analysis
Four publications*
• Methods & Frameworks
• Newest pillar for SD objectives
• PM supporting other methods
Three publications
*Two publications were assigned to both the economic and the environmental pillar
• Least developed pillar
• Processes have a large impact
• Potentially requires enhancements

23
SLR-2: How Process Mining must be applied to Support Environmental Quality has
so far not been researched to its full extent.
R0 Refuse
R1 Reduce
R2 Resell/Reuse
R3 Repair/Maintain
R4 Refurbish
R5 Remanufacture
R6 Repurpose
R7 Recycle
R8 Recover
R9 Re-mine
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Considered Aspects
Process Discovery 19
Regular Assessment 8
One-time Analysis 5
Automation 2
Simulation 1
↑
Circular Economy
Contributions # Publications
#
Publications
# Publication by the degree of opaqueness
• PM for Sustainability is a
research gap.
• PM mainly applied to increase
process efficiency and drive
digitalisation.
• Main benefits in the assessment
of sustainability.
• Mainly high-level descriptions,
no concrete methods or
frameworks
• Benefits of state-of-the-art PM
neither assessed nor applied.
• PM mainly applied in the context
of value-adding activities and
maintenance processes.
The full potential of PM for
Environmental Quality is not yet
researched.

24
Process Mining has mainly been discussed regarding Manufacturing and
Assembly Processes.
Make
Manufacture Assemble Distribute
Use
Maintain
R3: Repair
Source
…
R2: Reuse
R4: Refurbish
R5: Remanufacture
R7: Recycle
R6: Repurpose
R8: Recover
R9: Re-mine
…
Reverse Logistics
Different Supply Chain
Maintain
R3: Repair

Framework

26
To support further research and applications of Process Mining in consideration of
Sustainability, a PM4S Framework is presented.
Raw Material
Waste
Resources
Product
• Indicated as such
• Quantified
• Information on material
• Information on the origin
• Indicated as such
• Information on settings
• Information on capacity
OBJECTS
Attributes
Emission
Database
Information
Systems
Energy
Emissions
EVENTS
Sourcing, Production, Logistics, Maintenance
pot. on activity level
Attributes
What elements of the process must be considered?
How to integrate them into existing PM standards?
What kinds of activities to consider?
How to get the required data?

27
To support sustainable development the assessment of business processes’ impact
is crucial. Using this assessment, PM4S can support an increase in sustainability.
Object-Centric Process Model
Sustainability Assessment
1. Determine consumed, partially-consumed and used
objects per event
2. Assess impact (circulation, energy, emissions) per
product
3. Assess overall process/system related impact
Assessment
Execution/Management Support
Comparisons
of Alternatives
Root cause
detection
Improvement / Decision Support
Targets
Standards
Laws and
Regulations
Compliance Checking
Monitoring
Simulation
Decision Support

28
The areas of Process Mining supporting Sustainability.
Real-life Processes
IT-Systems
Event
Data
extract
explore
select,
filter
clean
Process
Model
discover
show
model
adapt
Conformance
Performance
Diagnostics
align
replay
enrich
Predictions
Improvements
ML
apply
compare
show Interpret
drill down
act
transform
Process Discovery
Comparative PM
Predictive PM
Action-oriented PM
Understanding current
practices
Assess circularity, environmental
impact, resource efficiency,
identify bottlenecks
Company
Goals
Standards
Laws and
Regulations
Check Compliance, Identify
Abnormalities
Support Decision Making
Alternative Practices, Trade-offs between
different SD aspects, Root Cause Analysis
Correlations in different practices and certain
metrics, Predicting Goal Achievement with
consideration of varying practices, Simulating the
impact of decisions
Automating and Digitalising
processes with RPA

29
The areas of Process Mining supporting Sustainability.
Real-life Processes
IT-Systems
Event
Data
extract
explore
select,
filter
clean
Process
Model
discover
show
model
adapt
Conformance
Performance
Diagnostics
align
replay
enrich
Predictions
Improvements
ML
apply
compare
show Interpret
drill down
act
transform
Process Discovery
Comparative PM
Predictive PM
Action-oriented PM
Understanding current
practices
Assess circularity, environmental
impact, resource efficiency,
identify bottlenecks
Company
Goals
Standards
Laws and
Regulations
Check Compliance, Identify
Abnormalities
Support Decision Making
Alternative Practices, Trade-offs between
different SD aspects, Root Cause Analysis
Correlations in different practices and certain
metrics, Predicting Goal Achievement with
consideration of varying practices, Simulating the
impact of decisions
Automating and Digitalising
processes with RPA
PM4S can support….
….the increase in process efficiency,
...the transformation towards more sustainable practices, and
…the introduction of new processes into existing systems.
However, we still have steps to go until we’re there.

30
PM4S is just getting started, several research questions are still open and have to be
considered.
1 International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook (2010)
• Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a standardised method of assessing the impact of a product throughout its
entire life cycle1. How it can be mapped to PM including the consideration of the allocation problem has to
be discovered.
• LCA focusses on a single product’s impact to SD – how can an entire system’s impact be assessed?
• Requires more interdisciplinary research (with environmental and social scientists)
• The different states process resources can perform a task in have to be taken into account.
• Consideration of quantities, e.g. the scalability of a system and the processes.
• Stronger support for logistical processes and material flows.
• Longer processes have to be considered, requiring distributed data. PM techniques have to enable the
consideration of the entire supply chain (see federated PM)
Object d-e-f
Σ Energy
Σ Emissions
Virgin Resource
Object g-h-i
Σ Energy
Σ Emissions
Object a-b-c|w
Σ Energy
Σ Emissions
Recycled Material
13%
Consumed Energy Created Emissions
EVENT 2
Consumed Energy
Created Emissions
EVENT 1
Object a-b-c
Σ Energy
Σ Emissions
Recycled Material
≤
Object a-b-c
Σ Energy
Σ Emissions
Recycled Material
Input Output
?

So, let’s help the world ReThink Processes!
Thank you very much for your attention!
Also, a big thanks to our reviewers for the valuable feedback!
Looking forward to your questions!
Nina Graves
graves@pads.rwth-aachen.de
More on PM: https://processmining.org/

Process Mining for Sustainability

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