Retrieving the resource availability calendars of a process from an event log

Abstract

Knowing the availability of human resources for a business process is required, e.g., when allocating resources to work items, or when analyzing the process using a simulation model. In this respect, it should be taken into account that staff members are not permanently available and that they can be involved in multiple processes within the company. Consequently, it is far from trivial to specify their availability for the single process from, e.g., generic timetables. To this end, this paper presents a new method to automatically retrieve resource availability calendars from event logs containing process execution information. The retrieved resource availability calendars are the first to take into account (i) the temporal dimension of availability, i.e. the time of day at which a resource is available, and (ii) intermediate availability interruptions (e.g. due to a break). Empirical evaluation using synthetic data shows that the method's key outputs closely resemble their equivalents in reality.