Architecting Semantic Process Mining-Driven Optimization and Adaptation of Business

Workflows for the Mobility Industry

Tudor B. Ionescu

Software Architect @SIEMENS

Safety Critical Applications Processes are also safety critical!

SIEMENS Rail Automation Applications

Business Processes in Rail Automation • Complex business processes described in natural language

– Conventional documents (MS Word, PDF) – Process execution logs – Emails, meeting minutes, ...

• Business process = Unstructured data + Tacit knowledge + Workflows

• Safety, reliability, certifiability, and standard compliance

Key to the success of products and projects

• Fulfilling these non-functional requirements is extremely costly and time-consuming

Automation and optimization desired 3

Agenda

• Introduction – Mission/safety-critical business processes in the railway domain

• Challenges of Process Automation and Optimization • A Three-Process Model for Automation and Optimization • Implementation in Camunda • Process Recovery • Conclusion

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Challenges of Process Automation and Optimization

• Extracting semantic process models from unstructured data – handbooks, logbooks, execution logs of tools and past projects

• Enacting the automation and optimization of business processes according to the mined semantic models

• Seamlessly and dynamically adapting running processes whenever – Unexpected potentially harmful situations occur – New insights are gained by means of process mining – New safety compliance requirements become available

• Architecting reliable process architectures for mission/safety-critical applications

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Example Process • Siemens Mobility

– Process for rail automation plant • CIRCE • AUTOCAD • Excel, CSV, PDFs • File Lists, signal tables, … • Email and other communication means • Legacy technologies (SAMBA, X25 …) • People • Standards & Constraints Verification

– Goal • Automate & optimize (some of) these tasks

– Success criteria • The automated process is really used • The automated process makes life easier not harder

1) Service Tasks = Facades for external resources

2) Notifications from external services and actors (e.g., emails)

3) Which patterns (e.g., publish-subscribe, polling)

4) Interfaces (REST or legacy?)

5) Data flow 6) Deployment 7) Process recovery

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Task

Approach: A Three-Process Model

Task

Task

Adapted task

Adapt Suspend and modify

Process Input & Output

Task

Require + Design + Decide

Inform Security Problem

Optimization potential

Business Process(es)

Mining Process(es)

Monitor + Learn

Adaptation Process(es)

KB

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Process Mining and Adaptation

• Mining process – Runs in parallel with the productive business processes – Its main task consists of mining the unstructured process data – Results (insights) are given in

• Natural language Expert-driven adaptation (for safety and/or mission critical processes)

• RDF format (JSON-LD) Automated adaptation (for non-critical processes)

– Insights are used to inform the adaptation process

• Adaptation process – Uses insights to optimize and adapt the main process – Adaptation is realized without interrupting the main process – Must ensure recovery in case of failures caused by adaptations

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Example insight • Mining task:

– Mining GIT (versioning system) logs produced by the process • Result: Reverse engineered Gantt chart (Ref…)

– BALA, S., CABANILLAS, C., MENDLING, J., ROGGE-SOLTI, A., POLLERES, A. (2015). Mining Project-Oriented Business Processes. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 9253, 425-440.

• Insight: Process can be optimized How? See Gantt Chart • Requirement: Adapt the processes accordingly

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Implementation: Camunda Suite • Pros

+ Addresses all aspects of process management & execution + High-quality documentation + Sound software architecture (high design pattern density) + Uses state of the art technology (JAX-RS, AngularJS, Spring, jQuery, etc.) + Many supported environments (Tomcat, JBOSS, Glassfish …) + Flexibility, extensibility (Community extensions)

• Cons? - Is it really lightweight?

• A constellation of tools Temptation to use them all Complexity - Infrastructure needs Web servers, database servers

Administrators + Programmers - Real flexibility or exhaustiveness?

• Bottom line + Pros seem to dominate cons from a software architecture perspective

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The Adaptation Process

• Uses insights to optimize and adapt the main process • Adaptation is realized without interrupting the main process • Must ensure recovery in case of failures caused by adaptations

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What about recovery in case of failures? • Ad hoc software/process updates may introduce latent

software faults – Obvious errors are corrected early (e.g. during development and

testing) subtler errors remain in the code and are more difficult to detect

– The more complex the process the harder it is to make it reliable and safe

– There is a finite amount of ressources to be spent on testing

Safety/mission-critical processes must have means for recovery at runtime (switch to reliable process)

• Idea Use forward recovery mechanism – Sha, L. (2001). Using simplicity to control complexity. IEEE Software,

(4), 20-28.

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Forward Recovery for Safety/Mission-Critical Processes

• Challenge – The root of software faults is complexity

• But: cost reduction and optimization can only be achieved through process adaptation, which may lead to more complex processes

• Design Tactic – Use a simple and reliable core process that provides the essential

service – Decompose the process in adaptable subprocesses – Adapt one subprocess at a time version_1 (core), version_2

(adapted) – Keep core version in stand-by in case adapted version fails

• Prerequisite: You need a simple and reliable core process – But: if you can‘t develop a simple and reliable process there are

chances you will not be able to develop an optimized reliable process

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Subprocess Adaptation Example

Task automation

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Forward Recovery

• Detect faulty behavior using an acceptance test or safe output region check

• Keep/derive an analytic relationship between the outputs of the core and adapted versions of the subprocesses, e.g. – DIFF: the modified process should only produce an output that is

measurable and differentiable with respect to the old version of the process

• Camunda @runtime subprocess deployment mechanism 15

Demo • saFiddle

– Web-based tool for editing and managing requirements and design decisions Integrates into the adaptation process

– Uses concept linkage between architectural elements and concepts (e.g. requirements, quality attributes, design patterns and tactics, etc.)

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Conclusion • Process adaptation and optimization is a desideratum

Reduces costs • In safety/mission-critical contexts

– Adaptation & optimization cannot be automated – Non-functional requirements such as safety and reliability must be

fulfilled at all times – Means for process recovery must be in place

• The three-process model is able to fulfill these requirements • The integration into the adaptation process of web-based

tools for – Designing safe and reliable adaptations of subprocesses – Creating traceable requirements and design decisions – Linking faults and errors to design decisions Enable a learning

process

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Acknowledgements • This work has been funded by the Austrian Research

Promotion Agency (FFG) under grant 845638 (SHAPE).

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