Overview
Nine personas represent the distinct participants in the Arda inventory management platform, and they divide three ways.
Six are customer-side. Five form the kanban replenishment loop — a relay that spans the shop floor, the office, and the receiving dock — and the Business Principal owns the business case and strategic direction that drives adoption.
Two are Arda-internal. The Customer Support Specialist is the platform provider’s own support role, working across customer tenants. The Platform Operator runs the platform itself and is catalogued separately under Internal Personas below.
One is external. The Supplier is not a platform user, but the counterparty every committed order goes to and every delivery comes from.
Personas
Section titled “Personas”| Persona | Role in the Loop |
|---|---|
| Irene Itemsworth | Arda Manager. Owns the loop end to end: item setup, card creation, printing, floor walks, cultural enforcement, and receiving. |
| Sam Scansworth | Triggers the loop by consuming supplies and scanning (or dropping) the kanban card at the reorder point. |
| David Dealsworth | Executes the loop by placing orders with suppliers and advancing card states through the procurement lifecycle. |
| Keisha Clerkson | Closes the loop by receiving deliveries, marking cards fulfilled, and returning cards to their shelf positions. |
| Owen Ownerton | Owns the business case for Arda. Decides what to bring under kanban management, funds the investment, and is accountable for ROI. In small operations, also wears David’s hat. |
| Alan Adminson | Configures the platform, onboards new users and inventory areas, stewards reference data quality — the infrastructure that makes the loop possible. |
| Charlie Supportson | Arda-internal Customer Support Specialist — works for the platform provider, not the customer. Troubleshoots customer-reported issues across tenants and builds API-driven support tooling and integrations. |
| Vera Vendorson | External counterparty — not a platform user. Receives David’s committed orders, answers and ships against them; her deliveries are what Keisha checks in at the dock. Represented in Arda as a business affiliate with the vendor role. |
Internal Personas
Section titled “Internal Personas”Charlie, above, is Arda-internal too. What separates this persona is the subject of the work: Charlie works inside customers’ inventory operations from Arda’s side, while the Platform Operator runs the platform those operations run on.
| Persona | Role |
|---|---|
| Priya Platformson | Platform Operator. On-call for production faults, owns alerting configuration and the OAM plane. Invisible to the loop when her work goes well. |
The Kanban Loop
Section titled “The Kanban Loop”The loop is a relay across the operational personas:
- Setup (Irene): Creates items, prints cards, laminates them, places them at reorder points on the shelf. Prints shelf labels and breadcrumbs. Card state: AVAILABLE.
- Consumption and Trigger (Sam): Uses supplies until the front bin empties. Picks up the visible kanban card. Scans it at the workstation or drops it in the “To Order” bin. Card state: REQUESTED.
- Order Processing (David): Reviews the Order Queue grouped by supplier. Places orders via supplier portals, email/PO, phone, or RFQ. Advances card states. Card state: INPROCESS.
- Receipt (Keisha): Receives the delivery at the dock. Marks items received in Arda. Returns physical cards to their shelf positions using breadcrumbs for location guidance. Card state: FULFILLED / SHELVED.
- Loop Closed: Card is back at the reorder point, item is restocked, system is ready for the next cycle.
The loop breaks in three predictable places: the worker does not scan the card, the card is missing or damaged, or the delivery is received but not logged. All operational personas have responsibilities that address these failure modes.
Owen (Business Principal) sits above the loop: accountable for whether the system delivers value, deciding which areas to manage and when to expand. Alan (Account Admin) sits beneath it: ensuring the platform, data, and user accounts are ready so the loop can run without friction. Charlie (Customer Support) stands behind all of them on the Arda side: when the loop’s users hit something they cannot resolve, Charlie investigates across tenants and escalates platform bugs with evidence. Vera (Supplier) sits outside the loop’s boundary: David’s step 3 ends at her door, and Keisha’s step 4 begins with her truck.
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