Objects, events, and relationships
Object-centric process mining (OCPM) visualizes business operations as interconnected objects, events, and relationships. Modeling data through this framework creates an extensible digital twin that allows you to analyze complex, cross-process dependencies and eliminate traditional process silos.
Objects
An object is a digital representation of a real-world business entity, such as a customer, company, order, or invoice. Each object instance contains attributes (such as ID, total price, and currency) that store current facts. The system records attribute changes with a timestamp alongside historical and updated values.
Events
An event represents a discrete real-world occurrence that applies to one or more objects at a specific point in time, such as an invoice payment, a purchase order creation, or an order shipment. Events contain attributes including an ID, a timestamp, and contextual metadata used for grouping and analysis.
Events-to-Objects Relationships
These links connect events to the specific objects they affect (for example, connecting a shipment event to a purchase order object). This structure tracks the lifecycle and operational journey of an object across business processes.
Object-to-Object Relationships
These links define structural dependencies and interactions between separate business entities using one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many cardinality.
The following Order-to-Cash (O2C) scenario demonstrates the interaction between objects, events, and relationships:
Use case: Order-to-Cash (O2C) process in a manufacturing company
The order-to-cash process in manufacturing is the end-to-end workflow that begins when a customer places an order and ends when the manufacturer receives payment. It includes order entry, production and fulfillment, shipping, invoicing, and collections to ensure products are delivered and revenue is captured efficiently.
With the O2C process, the following example objects, events, and relationships can be seen:
O2C objects
In object-centric process mining, multiple objects exist in a single process. For O2C, typical objects could include:
Customer Order (primary object)
Product (item being sold)
Delivery (shipment associated with an order)
Invoice (billing document)
O2C events
Events are activities that involve one or more objects. Examples include:
Event | Example timestamp | Related objects |
|---|---|---|
Order created | 2025-11-01 08:00 | Customer Order |
Product picked | 2025-11-02 10:00 | Product, Customer Order |
Product packed | 2025-11-02 14:00 | Product, Customer Order |
Delivery shipped | 2025-11-03 09:00 | Delivery, Customer Order, Product |
Invoice issued | 2025-11-04 11:00 | Invoice, Customer Order |
O2C relationships
Relationships describe how objects are connected, often many-to-many:
Customer Order ↔ Product: One order can contain multiple products; a product may appear in multiple orders (for repeat items).
Customer Order ↔ Delivery: One order may result in one or multiple deliveries (partial shipment).
Customer Order ↔ Invoice: One order generates one or multiple invoices (split billing).
Graphically, you can imagine it as a network:
Order 123 ├─ Product A ├─ Product B ├─ Delivery D1 └─ Invoice I1
Why OCPM helps here
In traditional process mining, you’d have to “flatten” the process to a single case (e.g., order ID), which loses detail about products or deliveries.
With object-centric mining, you can analyze interactions across objects, for example:
Delays in product picking affecting multiple deliveries.
Partial shipments leading to invoice inconsistencies.
Bottlenecks caused by products shared across multiple orders.