Detecting Dynamic Relationships in Object-Centric Event Logs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework for representing and manipulating dynamic object relationships in object-centric event logs, addressing a key gap in process mining.

Contribution

It defines assumptions for dynamic relationships in OCELs and demonstrates their applicability to real logs, enhancing clarity and analysis capabilities.

Findings

Existing logs often satisfy the new assumptions

The framework enables unambiguous relationship semantics

Improves transparency in object-centric process analysis

Abstract

Object-centric process mining examines how processes interact with multiple co-evolving objects, and has gained great interest in recent years. However, object-centric event logs (OCELs) leave object relationships underspecified in several respects, especially if relationships are dynamic, i.e., they change over time. In this paper, we identify and formally define for the first time assumptions that allow to represent and manipulate dynamic relationships in OCELs in a semantically unambiguous way. We evaluate existing logs to show that our assumptions are often satisfied, ensuring full transparency of relationship semantics.