On Process Model Synthesis Based on Event Logs with Noise

Process mining is a new emerging discipline related to process management, formal process models, and data mining. One of the main tasks of process mining is the model synthesis (discovery) based on event logs. A wide range of algorithms for process model discovery, analysis, and enhancement is developed. The real-life event logs often contain noise of different types. In this paper we describe the main causes of noise in the event logs and study the effect of noise on the performance of process discovery algorithms. The experimental results of application of the main process discovery algorithms to artificial event logs with noise are provided. Specially generated event logs with noise of different types were processed using the four basic discovery techniques. Although modern algorithms can cope with some types of noise, in most cases, their use does not lead to obtaining a satisfactory result. Thus, there is a need for more sophisticated algorithms to deal with noise of different types.