diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/fpm/PrefixSpan.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/fpm/PrefixSpan.scala
index 899078a759f31..e6752332cdeeb 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/fpm/PrefixSpan.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/fpm/PrefixSpan.scala
@@ -149,7 +149,8 @@ class PrefixSpan private (
     }
 
     // Process the small projected databases locally
-    val remainingResults = getPatternsInLocal(minCount, pairsForLocal.groupByKey())
+    val remainingResults = getPatternsInLocal(
+      minCount, sc.parallelize(pairsForLocal, 1).groupByKey())
 
     (sc.parallelize(resultsAccumulator, 1) ++ remainingResults)
       .map { case (pattern, count) => (pattern.toArray, count) }
@@ -163,7 +164,7 @@ class PrefixSpan private (
    *         greater than [[maxLocalProjDBSize]]
    */
   private def partitionByProjDBSize(prefixSuffixPairs: RDD[(List[Int], Array[Int])])
-    : (RDD[(List[Int], Array[Int])], RDD[(List[Int], Array[Int])]) = {
+    : (Array[(List[Int], Array[Int])], RDD[(List[Int], Array[Int])]) = {
     val prefixToSuffixSize = prefixSuffixPairs
       .aggregateByKey(0)(
         seqOp = { case (count, suffix) => count + suffix.length },
@@ -175,7 +176,7 @@ class PrefixSpan private (
       .toSet
     val small = prefixSuffixPairs.filter { case (prefix, _) => smallPrefixes.contains(prefix) }
     val large = prefixSuffixPairs.filter { case (prefix, _) => !smallPrefixes.contains(prefix) }
-    (small, large)
+    (small.collect(), large)
   }
 
   /**