Process Mining: Germany’s most valuable start-up helps industry save
Munich. As an IT data explorer, Patrick Lechner is a specialist who is still rare in companies. The specialist is responsible for “process extraction” at the car manufacturer BMW. It is an innovative technology that uses special software to find weaknesses in corporate IT in order to warn of impending supply chain disruptions or to track unnecessary cost drivers.
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“We both started working at BMW in 2016, achieved our first results in ten days and are now active in almost all areas of the company, from production to quality management to customer service,” says Lechner. The monetary benefits BMW derives from data mining remain a mystery. Provides examples of practical application.
Apple, Google, Amazon – the fight for the car has begun
Apple’s announcement that it would be releasing a completely new version of its CarPlay software in the coming year caused a sensation in the industry. In the future, the company wants to actively intervene in the vehicle’s software. Google and Amazon are also not idle.
“In production, we limited reworking of newly manufactured cars or lowered energy costs for the produced car,” says the expert. On the customer side, BMW also knows whether and to what extent drivers benefit from assistance systems installed in new cars.
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Lars Reinkemeyer provides information to the extent that such arrangements can be translated into a monetary benefit. The former Siemens manager was hired a year ago by Celonis, Germany’s most expensive start-up company and world leader in process mining with a value of around ten billion euros. “Many of our customers achieve added value in double-digit million each year,” reveals Celonis’ manager.
The problem is that such successes are limited if companies’ process mining software is not in professional hands. This is precisely what was found in a study conducted by a professor of business informatics in Bayreuth and vice president of the Institute of Information Technology. Fraunhofer, Maximilian Röglinger. “Without your own process mining competence center, you work on your back,” says a professor at Bayreuth University. On the other hand, if such a special team existed, the potential for success would increase almost tenfold, and improvements in the organizational system of companies would also occur much faster.
People remain the limiting factor for success
Röglinger knows the reason for this as well. “The human factor is a factor that limits success,” she emphasizes. Lindner can confirm this from experience. “The openness to the new technology varied from one BMW plant to another,” he recalls. “If it doesn’t upset at least three people, it’s not a process of change,” explains Röglinger. With clear success, process mining is now part of everyday BMW life. But the team of experts responsible for this in the Munich-based company now also includes 17 data experts. Hardly any of the 1,300 Celonis customers around the world can boast of something like this.
As the fight for skilled workers in this area is particularly fierce, medium-sized companies in particular also find it difficult to find the necessary specialists. “Big companies do it easier and are pioneers,” admits Reinkemeyer. On the other hand, the technology can be used in all industries, which is also underlined by Röglinger.
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His research was unable to measure any differences by industry or region. The thesis that Germany is reluctant to new technologies is not confirmed in process mining. This may also be due to the fact that this new area of software was invented in Europe and, together with Celonis in Munich, is the headquarters of a company which, according to the latest analyzes, controls around 60 percent of the related world market. The fact that this multi-billion dollar market is used by all suppliers together to only a low single-digit percentage may also be related to a lack of specialized personnel.