A Process Deviation Analysis - A Case Study

Processes are not always executed as expected. Deviations assure the necessary flexibility within a company, but also increase possible internal control weaknesses. Since the number of cases following such a deviation can grow very large, it becomes difficult to analyze them case-by-case. This paper proposes a semi-automatic process deviation analysis method which combines process mining with association rule mining to simplify the analysis of deviating cases. Association rule mining is used to group deviating cases into business rules according to similar attribute values. Consequently, only the resulting business rules need to be examined on their acceptability which makes the analysis less complicated. Therefore, this method can be used to support the search for internal control weaknesses.