Overview
The Freeze Time enrichment is a specialized time manipulation operator that sets a fixed reference point for all time-based calculations within your process mining dataset. When you apply this enrichment, it establishes a specific date and time as the "current time" for all subsequent enrichments that calculate durations or time differences relative to "now." This is particularly valuable when you need to perform consistent historical analysis, create reproducible reports, or simulate process states at specific points in time.
This enrichment fundamentally changes how your dataset interprets the concept of "current time." Instead of using the actual system time when calculations are performed, all time-sensitive enrichments will use your frozen timestamp as their reference point. This ensures that duration calculations, aging metrics, and time-based categorizations remain consistent regardless of when you run your analysis, making it essential for regulatory reporting, historical comparisons, and point-in-time process reconstructions.
Common Uses
- Historical reporting and compliance audits - Generate reports that show the exact state of processes at a specific past date for regulatory compliance or audit purposes
- Year-end or month-end analysis - Freeze time at the end of fiscal periods to calculate accurate aging metrics, cycle times, and performance indicators
- Consistent benchmark calculations - Ensure that all time-based KPIs use the same reference point when comparing process performance across different datasets
- Simulation and what-if scenarios - Set different freeze points to understand how processes would appear at various stages of completion
- Reproducible analysis workflows - Guarantee that time-sensitive calculations produce identical results when analyses are rerun at later dates
- Aged inventory or receivables tracking - Calculate how long items have been outstanding as of a specific cutoff date rather than the current date
- Project milestone assessments - Evaluate project status and duration metrics as they appeared at critical decision points
Settings
Date: The specific date to use as the frozen reference point for all time-based calculations in the dataset. This date becomes the "current time" for enrichments that calculate durations between events and "now." The date selector allows you to choose any date from the past or future, with the default being today's date when you first add the enrichment. Format is displayed as yyyy-MM-dd in the interface.
Examples
Example 1: Month-End Accounts Receivable Aging
Scenario: A finance team needs to generate consistent aging reports showing invoice statuses as of the last day of each month, regardless of when the analysis is actually performed.
Settings:
- Date: 2024-12-31
Output: When combined with "Duration Between an Attribute and Current Time" enrichment targeting the invoice date attribute, all aging calculations will use December 31, 2024 as the reference point. This means an invoice dated December 1, 2024 will show as 30 days old, even if you run the analysis in February 2025.
Insights: This frozen time approach ensures that month-end reports remain consistent and can be regenerated at any time with identical results, critical for financial audits and regulatory compliance.
Example 2: Manufacturing Order Backlog Analysis
Scenario: A manufacturing plant manager wants to analyze the state of all open production orders as they appeared at the end of the previous quarter to understand bottlenecks and capacity issues.
Settings:
- Date: 2024-09-30
Output: All duration calculations for open orders will be measured from their start dates to September 30, 2024. Orders that were completed after this date will still show as "in progress" with durations calculated up to the freeze point. This provides an accurate snapshot of the production pipeline at quarter-end.
Insights: By freezing time at strategic points, managers can reconstruct historical process states to understand what information was available for decision-making at critical moments.
Example 3: Healthcare Patient Wait Time Reporting
Scenario: A hospital needs to report emergency department wait times for all patients present in the facility at midnight for regulatory reporting, showing how long each patient had been waiting at that exact moment.
Settings:
- Date: 2024-11-15
Output: When calculating durations between patient arrival times and "current time," all calculations use November 15, 2024 at 00:00 as the endpoint. A patient who arrived at 8:00 PM on November 14 would show a 4-hour wait time, regardless of when they were actually discharged or when the report is generated.
Insights: This enables accurate point-in-time reporting for regulatory compliance, showing the exact state of patient queues at mandated reporting times.
Example 4: Project Portfolio Status Dashboard
Scenario: A PMO needs to recreate project status dashboards showing all project durations and delays as they appeared during quarterly steering committee meetings for post-implementation reviews.
Settings:
- Date: 2024-10-15
Output: All project duration metrics, milestone aging calculations, and delay measurements use October 15, 2024 as their reference point. Projects show their status and duration as of this date, allowing accurate recreation of the dashboard that was presented to stakeholders.
Insights: Freezing time at presentation dates allows teams to validate historical decisions and understand what data was available at crucial decision points.
Example 5: Supply Chain Lead Time Analysis
Scenario: A procurement team needs to analyze purchase order lead times as of year-end for supplier performance evaluations, ensuring all calculations use the same cutoff date regardless of when orders were actually received.
Settings:
- Date: 2024-12-31
Output: Orders still in transit on December 31, 2024 will show lead times calculated from order date to the freeze point. Orders received in January 2025 will still use December 31 as the calculation endpoint, accurately reflecting year-end performance metrics.
Insights: This approach ensures fair supplier comparisons by using consistent measurement endpoints, preventing early January deliveries from skewing year-end metrics.
Output
The Freeze Time enrichment does not create any new attributes directly. Instead, it modifies the behavior of the entire dataset by setting a global reference timestamp that affects all subsequent time-based calculations. This frozen timestamp becomes the "current time" reference for any enrichment that calculates durations or time differences relative to "now."
The impact is seen when using other time-sensitive enrichments such as "Duration Between an Attribute and Current Time" or "Duration Between an Activity and Current Time" - these will all use the frozen date rather than the actual system time. This ensures consistency across all time-based metrics and allows for reproducible analysis results.
The frozen time setting persists throughout your enrichment pipeline, affecting all downstream calculations until the dataset is reprocessed without the Freeze Time enrichment or with a different freeze date.
See Also
- Duration Between an Attribute and Current Time - Calculate how long ago an attribute date occurred relative to the frozen time
- Duration Between an Activity and Current Time - Measure elapsed time from activity execution to the frozen reference point
- Shift Activity Time - Adjust activity timestamps by a fixed duration for time-based adjustments
- Add Days to a Date - Create new date attributes by adding days to existing dates
- Correct Time Zone - Adjust all timestamps to a consistent timezone before freezing time
This documentation is part of the mindzie Studio process mining platform.