Abstract
Process mining techniques are able to extract knowledge from event logs commonly available in today's information systems. These techniques provide new means to discover, monitor, and improve processes in a variety of application domains. There are two main drivers for the growing interest in process mining. On the one hand, more and more events are being recorded, thus, providing detailed information about the history of processes. On the other hand, there is a need to improve and support business processes in competitive and rapidly changing environments. This manifesto is created by the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining and aims to promote the topic of process mining. Moreover, by defining a set of guiding principles and listing important challenges, this manifesto hopes to serve as a guide for software developers, scientists, consultants, business managers, and end-users. The goal is to increase the maturity of process mining as a new tool to improve the (re)design, control, and support of operational business processes. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Abstract
One of the aims of process mining is to retrieve a process model from a given event log. However, current techniques have problems when mining processes that contain nontrivial constructs, processes that are low structured and/or dealing with the presence of noise in the event logs. To overcome these problems, a new process representation language is presented in combination with an accompanying process mining algorithm. The most significant property of the new representation language is in the way the semantics of splits and joins are represented; by using so-called split/join frequency tables. This results in easy to understand process models even in the case of non-trivial constructs, low structured domains and the presence of noise. This paper explains the new process representation language and how the mining algorithm works. The algorithm is implemented as a plug-in in the ProM framework. An illustrative example with noise and a real life log of a complex and low structured process are used to explicate the presented approach. © 2011 IEEE.

Abstract
In this paper the so-called Event Cube is introduced, a multidimensional data structure that can hold information about all business dimensions. Like the data cubes of online analytic processing (OLAP) systems, the Event Cube can be used to improve the business analysis quality by providing immediate results under different levels of abstraction. An exploratory analysis of the application of process mining on multidimensional process data is the focus of this paper. The feasibility and potential of this approach is demonstrated through some practical examples. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

Abstract
In this paper, we consider the single machine scheduling problem with quadratic earliness and tardiness costs, and no machine idle time. We propose a genetic approach based on a random key alphabet and present several algorithms based on this approach. These versions differ on the generation of both the initial population and the individuals added in the migration step, as well as on the use of local search. The proposed procedures are compared with the best existing heuristics, as well as with optimal solutions for the smaller instance sizes. The computational results show that the proposed algorithms clearly outperform the existing procedures and are quite close to the optimum. The improvement over the existing heuristics increases with both the difficulty and the size of the instances. The performance of the proposed genetic approach is improved by the initialization of the initial population, the generation of greedy randomized solutions, and the addition of the local search procedure. Indeed, the more sophisticated versions can obtain similar or better solutions and are much faster. The genetic version that incorporates all the considered features is the new heuristic of choice for small and medium size instances.

Abstract
The methodology was based on qualitative data gathered from three case studies and collected from semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in the three municipalities. These, in turn, were selected from the participants in the Simplex program. This chapter highlights the role of national programs in the transfer of knowledge to the local municipalities as well as its importance in the development of their knowledge absorption capabilities.

Abstract
NNIGnets is a freeware computer program which can be used for teaching, research or business applications, of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). This software includes presently several tools for the application and analysis of Multilayer Perceptrons (MLPs) and Radial Basis Functions (RBEs), such as stratified Cross-Validation, Learning Curves, Adjusted Rand Index, novel cost functions, and Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension estimation, which are not usually found in other ANN software packages. NNIGnets was built following a software engineering approach which decouples operative from GUI functions, allowing an easy growth of the package. NNIGnets was tested by a variety of users, with different backgrounds and skills, who found it to be intuitive, complete and easy to use.