Prescriptive process monitoring: Quo vadis?

Area of Science:

• Business Process Management
• Operations Research
• Data Science

Background:

• Prescriptive process monitoring aims to optimize business operations through runtime interventions.
• Existing methods offer various approaches to prevent negative outcomes and improve process performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and categorize existing prescriptive process monitoring methods.
• To propose a framework for characterizing these methods based on key attributes.
• To identify challenges and future research directions in the field.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review (SLR) of prescriptive process monitoring methods.
• Development of a framework for method characterization.
• Analysis of identified literature based on the proposed framework.

Main Results:

• The SLR provides a structured overview of current prescriptive process monitoring techniques.
• A framework is proposed, categorizing methods by performance objectives, metrics, intervention types, modeling, data, and policies.
• Key challenges and areas for future research are identified.

Conclusions:

• The field requires further validation of methods in real-world scenarios.
• Intervention types need expansion beyond temporal and cost factors.
• Policy design should incorporate causality and second-order effects for greater effectiveness.