From Source to Target: Leveraging Transfer Learning for Predictive Process Monitoring in Organizations

Abstract: Event logs reflect the behavior of business processes that are mapped in organizational information systems. Predictive process monitoring (PPM) transforms these data into value by creating process-related predictions that provide the insights required for proactive interventions at process runtime. Existing PPM techniques require sufficient amounts of event data or other relevant resources that might not be readily available, preventing some organizations from utilizing PPM. The transfer learning-based PPM technique presented in this paper allows organizations without suitable event data or other relevant resources to implement PPM for effective decision support. The technique is instantiated in two real-life use cases, based on which numerical experiments are performed using event logs for IT service management processes in an intra- and inter-organizational setting. The results of the experiments suggest that knowledge of one business process can be transferred to a similar business process in the same or a different organization to enable effective PPM in the target context. With the proposed technique, organizations can benefit from transfer learning in an intra- and inter-organizational setting, where resources like pre-trained models are transferred within and across organizational boundaries.