INFUS 2025 Keynote Speach

Title:  Process Intelligence: Enabling Artificial Intelligence in Industrial Settings Using Process Mining
Presenter: Prof. Wil van der Aalst 

Abstract:

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in industrial settings has immense potential to optimize operations, enhance decision-making, and drive innovation. However, realizing this potential requires (1) explicit representations of organizational processes and their dynamics and (2) systematic use of related data scattered over different systems having hundreds or thousands of tables.

In this keynote, Wil van der Aalst, widely recognized as the “Godfather of Process Mining,” will explore how Process Intelligence—a groundbreaking fusion of process mining and AI—delivers actionable insights and drives sustainable improvements in industrial environments. Central to this advancement is Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM), an innovative approach that analyzes operational processes involving multiple object types (e.g., orders, products, customers), each with its own unique lifecycle. By examining processes through the lens of these interconnected objects, OCPM reveals patterns and bottlenecks often missed by traditional case-centric process mining.

This "OCPM lens" provides a robust foundation for deploying AI and Machine Learning (ML) in industrial applications. The keynote will showcase how process mining technologies uncover hidden inefficiencies, reveal intricate patterns, and establish data-driven frameworks for effective AI integration. Real-world examples will illustrate how organizations have successfully leveraged process mining to transform supply chains, enhance manufacturing systems, and elevate service delivery.

The keynote aims to achieve two primary objectives: (1) to increase awareness of the unique opportunities enabled by OCPM, and (2) to inspire researchers and practitioners, particularly those in related fields such as fuzzy methods, to engage in advancing Process Intelligence.

Short Bio:

Prof.dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst is a full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science (PADS) group. He is also the Chief Scientist at Celonis, part-time affiliated with the Fraunhofer FIT. His research interests include process mining, Petri nets, business process management, workflow management, process modeling, and process analysis. Wil van der Aalst has published over 1100 articles and books. According to Research.com, he is the second highest-ranked computer scientist in Germany and ranked 9th worldwide. According to Google Scholar, he has an H-index of 183 and more than 156.000 citations. Van der Aalst is an IFIP Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and ACM Fellow, and he received honorary degrees from the Moscow Higher School of Economics (Prof. h.c.), Tsinghua University, and Hasselt University (Dr. h.c.). He is also an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, the Academy of Europe, the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, and the German Academy of Science and Engineering. In 2018, he was awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship.