Object-centric... what?

You might have heard about it: Object-centric process mining (OCPM) is an entirely new way to look at processes with process mining, which will revolutionise the process transparency and business impact that process mining brings to businesses.

The concept, however, is hard to understand sometimes, so let me give it a go to explain it!

How does it work?

Instead of only looking at a pre-defined process with a start and an end and a pre-defined case definition (such as Order-to-Cash, which goes - roughly speaking - from the creation of an order until receiving the payment), you track each individual object that is part of the process. Since I’m a big fan of using Formula 1 examples in process mining (have you seen my webinar? 😉), we can also explain this through the process of a Formula 1 pitstop (an example also famously used by Wil van der Aalst ).

With traditional process mining, a pitstop would be measured from pit lane entry to pit lane exit. The case definition would be a single car going for a pitstop. Then, the process would be as follows:

While this would already be very interesting, you are very much bound to only this way of looking at the process. What if the tyres were late, and we want to understand why? What if one of the mechanics made a mistake that we want to understand? What if one tyre blew up and we suspect it was due to a production error, but cannot confirm that? 

This is where object-centric process mining comes in. With OCPM, we can now track all individual objects. And think about it, there are many in this process only already: there is a car, there are 8 tyres (4 old, 4 new), there are 10+ mechanics, and so on. 

This then stops limiting us from ONLY looking at the pit stop process itself. We could if we want to, if that’s what we are interested in: we would get the exact same process visualisation as described above. But what if we want to understand why the tyre blew up within a few laps?

Changing the perspective

We change our “perspective”, and look at all the events that were related to the tyre upstream in the process. Think about it: before the pit stop, the tyre was transported to the track. Before that, it was produced by Pirelli in a production process, and even before that, the tyre was produced from rubber and many more materials that were procured in a purchase-to-pay process even further upstream in the process.

By looking deeper into the process, we now understand everything that happend to that one tyre. We for example suddenly find out that the rubber of this particular tyre came from a supplier that - on average - has a higher fail-rate in the QA-checks. Perhaps we should not use that supplier’s rubber anymore to produce Formula 1 tyres, because the supplier cannot keep up with the high quality standards that are required.

At Apolix, we are always looking for ways to maximise the value our customers get from Celonis. Innovations like OCPM make us extremely excited about the future of process mining, and we are at the front-line to drive these innovations at our (to-be) customers.

OCPM truly will revolutionise process mining. I’m very excited for this, and I hope you are too!