Glossary

Every term below is model-defined: it names something the formal design model defines precisely, and the functional documentation uses it in exactly that sense. Definitions here are deliberately short — each group links the module page that owns the full treatment. Terms are grouped by the domain that owns them, with the cross-cutting vocabulary first.

Cross-cutting

Tenant

One customer organization’s isolated world. Nothing — records, references, pools, cards — crosses tenant boundaries.

Operation

An action a module exposes and a caller invokes: the solid arrows in the sequence diagrams. Each module page lists its operations with the gate that allows each one.

Notification

An announcement a module makes that other modules react to, without being called: the dashed arrows. See Everything is Observable.

Version pin

A reference to a reference-data record as of a specific version. A floating reference reads the current version each time; a frozen pin reads the pinned version forever. Pins never dangle: history is kept.

Retirement

The terminal end of a reference-data record (Live → Retired). It never erases history or invalidates pins; it gates new commitments only.

Gate

A precondition checked at a specific moment, always at a point of choice (creating, committing) and never at propagation. Refusals are specific: a disallowed action returns a precise, actionable reason.

The freeze

The moment a composed document becomes a commitment and its defining content stops changing: an order’s Submit, a receiving line’s Receive.

The shared discipline behind pins, retirement, and gates is the Reference-Data Module Pattern.

Reference data

Owned by Item, Business Affiliate, and Staff.

Item (catalog item)

The catalog entry for a kind of stock: what the tenant buys, makes, stocks, or sells. A description of a kind of thing, not physical stock of it.

Item version

One recorded state of an item; every edit writes the next version, nothing is overwritten.

Item supply

One way to source an item from a supplier: SKU, order method, quantity, cost, lead time. Part of the item’s versioned state.

Units-of-measure scheme

An item’s set of units with conversions to a common base. An item that carries one is inventory-tracked and gets exact quantity arithmetic.

Business affiliate

An external party the tenant deals with. A supplier is not a separate thing: it is an affiliate seen through its vendor role.

Business role

A capacity an affiliate acts in: Vendor, Customer, Carrier, Operator, or Other. One affiliate can bear several.

Name-only supplier

A supplier named informally before any affiliate is linked; legal for composing, insufficient for committing.

Staff member

A person or other real-world agent work is assigned to; the minimal reference-data record.

Resources

Owned by Kanban Cards, Inventory Items, and Processing Network.

Kanban card

The durable pull-replenishment signal for an item: a standing authorization to replenish a specific item in a specific quantity.

Card cycle

One lap of replenishment on one card: the live operational state of a single round trip. A card runs one live cycle at a time.

Lap

The cycle’s journey: demand travels from the point of use back toward what supplies it, materials travel forward, and depletion re-triggers the next lap.

Rollover

The ordinary end of a lap: re-triggering demand closes the current cycle (recorded completed) and opens the next in one act.

Withdraw

Ending a lap early, from any live state (recorded abandoned, final); the card reads Available again.

Available

The card-level reading “this card has no live cycle” — not a lap state.

Loop

The configured, directed route between two stations that a card circulates within. Reserved for this meaning: the replenishment process as a whole is called replenishment, never “the loop.”

Station

A place that consumes input materials, transforms them, and produces outputs; the anchor for card placement and demand.

Inventory item

A discrete, located, owned quantity of goods of one catalog item — actual stock, in a place, in a condition. Identity (item, license plate, serial) is permanent; state changes only through recorded operations.

License plate

An inventory item’s handling-unit identity, like a pallet’s label. Never reused.

Inventory pool

A set of inventory items of a single catalog item — “all the stock of this item, here.” Pools store membership, never counts.

Custody

A pool is held by exactly one custodian at a time (a receiving line, a demand item’s holding, a card’s cycle); acquired at the custodian’s commitment, released explicitly, never re-acquired.

As-of count

The total, degraded, and usable quantities of an item at a location, computed from the live inventory items at the asked moment. Computed, never stored.

Operations

Owned by Demand.

Demand item

The collated “intent to produce”: one production task, composed from card signals (or created directly), released to a station, executed, and completed.

Card signal

A card cycle’s demand, eligible for collation while the lap lives.

Collation

Grouping eligible card signals into a demand item. Which signals group together is the composing caller’s business decision; the module enforces eligibility and no double-holding.

Direct demand item

A demand item created without card signals — an ad-hoc production need riding the same machinery.

Production delivery

One recorded increment of produced material against a demand item: who delivered how much, when, into the holding pool. Immutable; corrections are revoke + recreate.

Holding pool

The demand item’s own inventory pool, accumulating produced material until it distributes onward.

Procurement

Owned by Orders.

Order

The agreement document with a supplier: composed freely as a Draft, frozen at Submit, ended only by deliberate Close (or Cancel while still a draft).

Order line

One item in one quantity on an order, servicing the demand items attached to it. Its frozen item pin is its descriptor.

Supplier binding

The order’s link to its vendor: floating while a draft, frozen at submission. A name alone can compose a draft but never carry a submission.

Submit

The commitment: freezes the order’s structure, supplier, header details, and assignee on their pinned versions, and marks every serviced demand item as in production.

Received amounts

How much has been received against each line, accrued automatically from production-delivery announcements and reduced by a compensating decrement when a delivery is revoked — never keyed in. Financially binding once the order closes: a revocation arriving after close is refused and alarmed, not applied — credit-note territory from there.

Confirmed / Receiving (views)

Computed readings over a Submitted order (every live line answered / some line has received material), not stored states.

Close short

Deliberately closing a line while some quantity is still outstanding; an explicit act, never automatic.

Receiving

Owned by Receiving.

Receiver

The capture document for one arrival at one dock; every piece of inventory born from its lines starts life located there.

Receiving line

One kind of thing received: what was expected, what the vendor stated, what was accepted, what was rejected and why.

Blind line

A line with no order behind it: goods simply showed up. Legal — and gated at the door, because the blind line is the acceptance decision.

Off-manifest

The operator’s explicit, recorded assertion that goods arrived beyond what any paperwork mentioned.

Stated quantity

The vendor’s claim from the packing slip, kept as an inert fact — never trusted arithmetic.

Order attribution

The commercial link “this line’s receipt satisfies that order line,” with the expected amount frozen at attach and the actual written exactly once, at the freeze.

Receive (the freeze)

The one act that writes the line’s counts, facts, and attribution actuals as the permanent record and births the accepted goods as an inventory pool at the dock.

Distribution

Moving born inventory onward against the frozen record; capture ends, the material keeps moving.