A genetic algorithm for discovering process trees

Existing process discovery approaches have problems dealing with competing quality dimensions (fitness, simplicity, generalization, and precision) and may produce anomalous process models (e.g., deadlocking models). In this paper we propose a new genetic process mining algorithm that discovers process models from event logs. The tree representation ensures the soundness of the model. Moreover, as experiments show, it is possible to balance the different quality dimensions. Our genetic process mining algorithm is the first algorithm where the search process can be guided by preferences of the user while ensuring correctness.