Isolated loops

TL;DR

This paper models complex decision-based processes as Eulerian paths to analyze and quantify redundancies, specifically isolated loops, providing an algorithm and bounds for their measurement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to model decision processes as Eulerian paths and develops an algorithm to measure isolated loops, a new form of redundancy.

Findings

Algorithm for calculating isolated loops on Eulerian paths.

Bound on the number of isolated loops in such processes.

Application to complex bureaucratic and industrial workflows.

Abstract

Many bureaucratic and industrial processes involve decision points where an object can be sent to a variety of different stations based on certain preconditions. Consider for example a visa application that has needs to be checked at various stages, and move to different stations based on the outcomes of said checks. While the individual decision points in these processes are well defined, in a complicated system, it is hard to understand the redundancies that can be introduced globally by composing a number of these decisions locally. In this paper, we model these processes as Eulerian paths and give an algorithm for calculating a measure of these redundancies, called isolated loops, as a type of loop count on Eulerian paths, and give a bound on this quantity.