A hybrid process-mining approach for simulation modeling

This paper presents a hybrid Modeling and Simulation framework to address business process challenges. The framework has integrated process mining techniques in the conceptual modeling phase to support developing simulation models that are unbiased and close reflection of reality in a timely manner. The hybrid approach overcomes the pitfalls of traditional conceptual modeling by using process mining techniques to discover valuable process knowledge from the analysis of event logs. The proposed hybrid framework has been applied to an Emergency Department (ED) in order to identify performance bottlenecks and explore improvement strategies in an attempt to meet national performance targets. A large number of unique process flows (i.e. patient pathways) within the ED were uncovered and deviations from process guidelines were accurately identified. Results show that unblocking of ED outflows have a significant impact on patients length of stay (over 80% improvement) rather than increasing the ED physical capacity.