Mandatory Activity

Overview

The Mandatory Activity enrichment identifies cases where required activities are missing from your process execution, helping you ensure process completeness and compliance with business rules. This conformance checking tool automatically detects when critical steps have been skipped, bypassed, or failed to execute, enabling you to maintain process integrity and regulatory compliance.

Unlike enrichments that detect unwanted activities, this enrichment focuses on verifying the presence of essential activities that must occur in every case for the process to be considered complete and compliant. For example, quality inspections in manufacturing, approval steps in procurement, or mandatory documentation activities in healthcare processes. The enrichment creates boolean attributes that flag cases missing these critical activities, allowing you to quickly identify and remediate incomplete process executions.

Common Uses

• Verify completion of mandatory quality control checks in manufacturing processes
• Ensure required approval steps are executed in procurement and purchase orders
• Confirm mandatory documentation activities in healthcare patient treatment flows
• Check for completion of required training verification before equipment operation
• Validate presence of mandatory security checks in IT access provisioning
• Monitor compliance with regulatory requirements that mandate specific process steps
• Detect cases where critical validation or verification activities were skipped

Settings

Rule Group Name: Enter a descriptive name for this conformance rule group. This name serves as a prefix for all attributes created by this enrichment and appears in conformance reports. Choose a name that clearly indicates the type of mandatory requirements being monitored, such as "Missing Required Activities", "Incomplete Process Steps", or "Mandatory Compliance Checks". Default value is "No activity".

Severity: Select the severity level for cases where mandatory activities are missing:

• Low: Missing activities that should be addressed but don't pose immediate risk
• Medium: Significant gaps that could impact process quality or efficiency
• High: Critical missing activities that represent compliance failures or major process defects

Activity Attribute Values: Select one or more activities from your event log that must be present in every compliant case. The enrichment will create a separate boolean attribute for each selected activity, marking cases where that specific mandatory activity is missing. Activities are displayed with their case count and percentage statistics to help you understand current compliance rates and identify which mandatory activities are most frequently skipped.

Examples

Example 1: Manufacturing Quality Assurance

Scenario: A manufacturing company needs to ensure that all products undergo mandatory quality inspection steps before shipping. Missing these inspections could result in defective products reaching customers and potential regulatory violations.

Settings:

• Rule Group Name: "Missing QA Steps"
• Severity: High
• Activity Attribute Values:
  • "Initial Quality Check"
  • "Final Product Inspection"
  • "Quality Certificate Generation"
  • "QA Manager Approval"

Output: The enrichment creates five boolean attributes on the case level:

• "Missing QA Steps" (master attribute - TRUE if any QA step is missing)
• "Missing QA Steps: Initial Quality Check" (TRUE when this specific activity is missing)
• "Missing QA Steps: Final Product Inspection" (TRUE when this activity is missing)
• "Missing QA Steps: Quality Certificate Generation" (TRUE when this activity is missing)
• "Missing QA Steps: QA Manager Approval" (TRUE when this activity is missing)

Cases with TRUE values indicate products that were shipped without completing all mandatory quality assurance steps.

Insights: Analysis revealed that 12% of cases were missing the "QA Manager Approval" step, primarily during weekend shifts when managers were unavailable. This led to implementing a rotating approval schedule to ensure continuous coverage.

Example 2: Healthcare Patient Admission Compliance

Scenario: A hospital must ensure that all patient admissions include mandatory documentation and assessment activities to comply with healthcare regulations and ensure proper patient care.

Settings:

• Rule Group Name: "Incomplete Admission Process"
• Severity: High
• Activity Attribute Values:
  • "Patient Consent Obtained"
  • "Insurance Verification"
  • "Initial Medical Assessment"
  • "Allergy Check Completed"
  • "Emergency Contact Recorded"

Output: The enrichment generates attributes marking cases where mandatory admission steps were not completed. For instance, "Incomplete Admission Process: Insurance Verification" = TRUE indicates patients admitted without insurance verification, which could lead to billing issues and compliance violations.

Insights: The analysis identified that 8% of emergency admissions were missing "Patient Consent Obtained" due to patient condition at arrival. This finding led to implementing a post-stabilization consent process for emergency cases.

Example 3: Financial Loan Processing

Scenario: A bank needs to verify that all loan applications go through mandatory verification and approval steps before disbursement to prevent fraud and ensure regulatory compliance.

Settings:

• Rule Group Name: "Missing Loan Verification"
• Severity: Medium
• Activity Attribute Values:
  • "Identity Verification"
  • "Credit Score Check"
  • "Income Verification"
  • "Collateral Assessment"
  • "Risk Manager Review"

Output: Boolean attributes flag loan cases processed without completing mandatory verification steps. For example, cases where "Missing Loan Verification: Collateral Assessment" = TRUE represent unsecured loans that should have had collateral verification.

Insights: The enrichment revealed that 5% of small business loans bypassed "Risk Manager Review" during peak processing periods, leading to implementation of automated risk scoring for low-value loans.

Example 4: IT Change Management

Scenario: An IT department must ensure all system changes follow the mandatory change management process, including testing and approval steps, to prevent unplanned outages.

Settings:

• Rule Group Name: "Incomplete Change Process"
• Severity: Medium
• Activity Attribute Values:
  • "Change Request Submitted"
  • "Impact Analysis Completed"
  • "Test Environment Validation"
  • "CAB Approval"
  • "Rollback Plan Documented"

Output: The enrichment identifies changes implemented without following the complete approval process. Cases marked with "Incomplete Change Process: Test Environment Validation" = TRUE represent changes deployed directly to production without testing.

Insights: Analysis showed that 15% of emergency changes skipped "Test Environment Validation", correlating with 60% of subsequent system incidents. This led to creating a rapid testing protocol for emergency changes.

Example 5: Procurement Compliance

Scenario: A procurement department needs to ensure all purchase orders above certain thresholds include mandatory competitive bidding and approval activities to maintain transparency and compliance.

Settings:

• Rule Group Name: "Missing Procurement Controls"
• Severity: High
• Activity Attribute Values:
  • "Multiple Vendor Quotes Obtained"
  • "Budget Verification"
  • "Procurement Committee Review"
  • "Legal Department Approval"
  • "Final Director Sign-off"

Output: Boolean conformance attributes identify purchase orders that bypassed mandatory procurement controls. The master attribute "Missing Procurement Controls" provides an overall compliance indicator, while individual attributes like "Missing Procurement Controls: Multiple Vendor Quotes Obtained" show specific control failures.

Insights: The enrichment discovered that 18% of high-value purchases were missing "Multiple Vendor Quotes Obtained", primarily for specialized equipment with single suppliers. This finding led to creating an exemption process for sole-source procurements.

Output

The Mandatory Activity enrichment creates multiple boolean attributes at the case level that indicate conformance issues:

Master Conformance Attribute: A single boolean attribute with the name specified in "Rule Group Name" that becomes TRUE when any of the selected mandatory activities are missing from a case. This provides a high-level indicator of process incompleteness.

Individual Activity Attributes: For each selected mandatory activity, a specific boolean attribute is created with the format "[Rule Group Name]: [Activity Name]". These attributes are TRUE when that specific mandatory activity is missing from the case, allowing detailed analysis of which requirements are most frequently missed.

Attribute Properties:

• Data Type: Boolean
• Display Format: Yes/No
• Column Type: ConformanceIssue
• Aggregation: Can be used with case count/percentage calculators to measure compliance rates

All created attributes can be used in subsequent filters to identify non-compliant cases, in calculators to measure compliance metrics, and in dashboards to monitor process completeness over time. The conformance issues are also registered in the system's conformance issue list with the specified severity level, enabling comprehensive conformance reporting and analysis.

See Also

• Undesired Activity - Detect activities that should not occur in your process
• Repeated Activity - Identify unintended activity repetitions
• Allowed Case Start Activities - Validate that cases begin with approved activities
• Allowed Case End Activities - Ensure cases end with proper completion activities
• Wrong Activity Order - Detect activities occurring in incorrect sequence

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This documentation is part of the mindzie Studio process mining platform.