From Source to Target: Leveraging Transfer Learning for Predictive Process Monitoring in Organizations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a transfer learning-based approach for predictive process monitoring that enables organizations with limited data to leverage existing knowledge from similar processes, improving decision support across organizational boundaries.

Contribution

It presents a novel transfer learning technique for PPM that works in intra- and inter-organizational contexts, addressing data scarcity issues in predictive process monitoring.

Findings

Knowledge transfer improves PPM accuracy in data-scarce settings

Effective cross-organizational transfer of pre-trained models

Numerical experiments validate the approach in real-life IT service processes

Abstract

Event logs reflect the behavior of business processes that are mapped in organizational information systems. Predictive process monitoring (PPM) transforms these data into value by creating process-related predictions that provide the insights required for proactive interventions at process runtime. Existing PPM techniques require sufficient amounts of event data or other relevant resources that might not be readily available, which prevents some organizations from utilizing PPM. The transfer learning-based PPM technique presented in this paper allows organizations without suitable event data or other relevant resources to implement PPM for effective decision support. This technique is instantiated in both a real-life intra- and an inter-organizational use case, based on which numerical experiments are performed using event logs for IT service management processes. The results of the experiments suggest that knowledge of one business process can be transferred to a similar business process in the same or a different organization to enable effective PPM in the target context. The proposed technique allows organizations to benefit from transfer learning in intra- and inter-organizational settings by transferring resources such as pre-trained models within and across organizational boundaries.