{"id":549,"date":"2025-05-15T14:18:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T12:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/?p=549"},"modified":"2025-05-15T14:33:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T12:33:49","slug":"object-centric-process-mining-a-new-perspective-for-sustainability-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/2025\/05\/15\/object-centric-process-mining-a-new-perspective-for-sustainability-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Object-Centric Process Mining: A New Perspective for Sustainability Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This post has been authored by <span class=\"given-name\">Nina Graves<\/span><span class=\"family-name\">.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Current approaches to organizational sustainability analysis face significant methodological challenges. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and similar frameworks require time-consuming manual data collection, rely on static models, and struggle to connect environmental impacts to their process-level causes. This often results in sustainability analysis becoming a reporting exercise rather than an integrated management approach.<\/p>\n<p>Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM) represents a methodological advancement that may address these limitations. The approach leverages Object-Centric Event Logs (OCEL), which capture relationships between events and multiple objects in business processes. The OCEL data structure contains timestamps, activities, objects, and their attributes\u2014allowing for multi-dimensional analysis.<\/p>\n<p>When enhanced with sustainability metrics, these logs provide a structural foundation for more granular environmental impact assessment. The methodology integrates inventory data, impact factors, and allocation mechanisms directly with process execution data.<\/p>\n<h2>Recent Work<\/h2>\n<p>In our recent explorative paper, we used an exemplary OCEL to explore and discuss the usage of OCPM for sustainability assessment. We showcased an approach in which a sustainability-enriched OCEL is used for 1) impact detection, 2) impact allocation, to enable 3) system analysis.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-552 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig0-1024x189.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"189\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig0-1024x189.png 1024w, https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig0-300x55.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig0-768x142.png 768w, https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig0.png 1429w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We demonstrated the analytical capabilities to track environmental impacts across the process, supporting the<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>determination of sustainability-related data from an OCEL,<\/li>\n<li>storage of sustainability data using an OCEL,<\/li>\n<li>automated modelling of complex process landscapes,<\/li>\n<li>flexible impact allocation, and<\/li>\n<li>potential automation for impact detection using impact databases.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Furthermore, we showed that the OCEL can support more accurate and flexible impact assessment and analysis by combining the same sustainability data used for traditional sustainability assessment with event data.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-554 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"449\" height=\"523\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig1.png 449w, https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/files\/2025\/05\/object-centric-process-mining-fig1-258x300.png 258w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 449px) 100vw, 449px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Figure 1- Example for more differentiated and accurate impact considerations.<\/p>\n<p>The distinguishing differences lie in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Multi-level analysis<\/strong>: Environmental impacts are calculated for individual instances (events and objects) which can be aggregated and differentiated, e.g., to activities or object types or by specific attributes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Multi-perspective analysis<\/strong>: The environmental impact can be considered with regard to different organizational elements, such as products, resources, total systems, individual (sub-)processes,\u2026<\/li>\n<li><strong>Combining difference reference units<\/strong>: The OCEL allows for the association of relevant primary data to events, (sets of) objects, and event-object combinations. This requires less allocation efforts in the pre-processing of the data enabling a stronger decoupling of impact assessment and impact allocation. This decoupling allows for the previously mentioned increased flexibility.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Naturally, the integration of sustainability data also allows for the application of OCPM techniques for causal investigations and may potentially even support impact management and compliance checking.<\/p>\n<h2>PoC Web Application: OCEAn \u2013 <strong>O<\/strong>bject-<strong>C<\/strong>entric <strong>E<\/strong>nvironmental <strong>An<\/strong>alysis<\/h2>\n<p>As a proof of concept, we provide OCEAn\u2014a software tool that links company data with sustainability information. It enables the definition of environmental impact rules, supports semi-automatic data processing, and provides various visualizations of results.<\/p>\n<p>OCEAn supports:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Integration of environmental data with process event logs<\/li>\n<li>Definition of impact rules at activity and attribute levels<\/li>\n<li>Multiple allocation algorithms based on object relationships<\/li>\n<li>Different visualization of environmental impacts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Discussion<\/h2>\n<p>The research presents both methodological advantages and challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Advantages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Leverages existing digital process traces<\/li>\n<li>Aligns process management with sustainability objectives<\/li>\n<li>Supports more accurate impact allocation through object relationships<\/li>\n<li>Enables root cause analysis of environmental hotspots<\/li>\n<li>Provides a data-driven foundation for ongoing assessment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Limitations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Limited by data availability and quality<\/li>\n<li>Requires identifiable process elements<\/li>\n<li>Depends on comprehensive domain expertise<\/li>\n<li>Allocation methodologies require further development<\/li>\n<li>Extracting OCELs and enhancement with sustainability data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This exploratory work establishes a foundation for further investigation into data-driven sustainability assessment. Future research directions include developing standardized frameworks for sustainability-enhanced OCELs, more sophisticated allocation methodologies, and improved visualization techniques for complex impact relationships.<\/p>\n<p>The work contributes to bridging conceptual gaps between process science and sustainability science, potentially enabling more dynamic and comprehensive environmental performance assessment in organizational contexts.<\/p>\n<h2>References:<\/h2>\n<p>Find the Paper on Research Gate: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/391736048_Object-Centric_Process_Mining_for_Semi-Automated_and_Multi-Perspective_Sustainability_Analyses\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/391736048_Object-Centric_Process_Mining_for_Semi-Automated_and_Multi-Perspective_Sustainability_Analyses<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Repository: <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/rwth-pads\/ocel4lca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/github.com\/rwth-pads\/ocel4lca<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post has been authored by Nina Graves. Current approaches to organizational sustainability analysis face significant methodological challenges. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and similar frameworks require time-consuming manual data collection, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1478,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"c2c_always_allow_admin_comments":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1478"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":560,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rwth-aachen.de\/pads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}