Innovation mindset

Innovation mindset

Process mining

Build the data set

Overview

BW Fishing Inc. (BWF) sells fishing supplies mainly to businesses across the country. The company has grown steadily over the last 10 years. BWF found a strategic niche in taking orders and fulfilling them immediately around the clock. Since BWF’s customers order supplies at unusual hours, BWF’s “always open” mantra has received customer praise. This practice, along with competitive pricing, has allowed BWF to build a loyal network of customers.

The C-suite executives at BWF have heard about the potential benefits of process mining to help them understand their business processes. They have assigned you to work on a process mining pilot test to evaluate the usefulness of this technology for BWF. Specifically, you are tasked with extracting and preparing data files from the company’s database system so that process mining dashboards can be created to understand the order-to-cash process at BWF.

Order-to-cash cycle at BWF

BWF previously documented its typical order-to-cash process in a narrative and flowchart. These have been provided in Appendix 1 and 2, respectively, for easy reference. Carefully review this information so that you have a full understanding of the standard process that BWF’s management wants all employees to follow for the order-to-cash cycle.

BWF database system

BWF uses a relational database system to record information about the order-to-cash process. The database follows normal modeling techniques, but to simplify querying, it does include a TransactionID variable in most tables. The database schema is shown in the image below. A data dictionary describing all of the fields in the database follows.

The company has used the same database system for several years. As such, when the company changes processes, it does not always fully update the system (it is cost prohibitive to do so). For example, while some tasks used to be performed manually, they now may be automated (or vice versa). You will need to understand the process, the system and then evaluate using the data whether the documented process matches what is currently recorded in the system.

Data dictionary