Overview
This page defines the vocabulary ProDex uses, as the product uses it today. Terms are alphabetical. Where a term means something different in simulation than in planning or BOMs, the entry says so.Artifact
A durable platform object produced by work in ProDex — a simulation model and its runs, a planning model and its runs, a BOM, a configuration template, a pipeline, an app, a schedule. Artifacts carry provenance and are what you open, edit, and share; when Dexter builds something for you, the result lands as an artifact you can inspect.Configuration
An instance produced by resolving a configuration template against a BOM. The template defines decision points (choose one, choose many, choose at least one); a configuration is the recorded set of selections that resolves them into a concrete product variant.Entity
A single shared construct used across the whole platform — simulation, BOMs, and planning all draw from one entity registry rather than keeping separate definitions. In a simulation, an entity is a thing that flows through the model: the item being processed, produced, moved, or transformed at each node. In BOMs and planning, the same entities are the SKUs and materials in the product graph — leaves are raw or supply-only items, assemblies are internal or finished SKUs. See Entities.Factory
The top-level container for your entire ProDex workspace. Everything you build — models, entities, BOMs, pipelines, plans, apps, and Dexter’s knowledge base — lives inside one active factory, and switching factories switches all of it. See Factory Management.Gate
A checkpoint in a custom workflow where Dexter shows you an intermediate result and asks a short approval question before the next step uses it.Knowledge Base
The persistent knowledge Dexter carries between sessions — “memory” is the underlying concept, but Knowledge Base is the name you see in the app. It is scoped to the factory, so every conversation in that factory draws on it, and it covers your operation, your data sources, and the artifacts built for it. A second scope, organization memory, is curated by admins and applied read-only across every factory in your organization.Model
A structured representation of an operation used for analysis. A simulation model is a discrete-event model of a process — nodes, entities, schedules — executed as runs; a planning model is an optimization-oriented representation used with BOMs, demand, supply, and inventory to produce planning runs. See Simulation and Planning.Monte Carlo
Running the same configuration many times with different random seeds to measure how much the results vary. In ProDex, ask Dexter to run a configuration with several seeds: it launches a batch of runs that differ only in their seed and compares their KPIs. See Replications.Pipeline
Repeatable data preparation that Dexter builds for you: it reads defined inputs, applies the same transformations and checks every time, and produces the same kind of output, such as a dataset. Pipelines live on the Data page’s Pipelines tab, where you run them and inspect each stage.A data pipeline is not the same thing as a configuration template in the BOM Configurator — those are a separate, unrelated concept.
Run
A single execution of a model that produces results. Simulation runs execute a simulation model, with a schedule or the model’s default settings, and emit event data, KPIs, and charts; planning runs execute a planning model against demand and supply inputs and emit a plan. Runs live under their parent model. See Runs and Planning Runs.Schedule
A time-based input nested under a simulation model: a start and end time, material releases, and scheduled actions. A model can have several schedules; a run uses the one you select, or the model’s default settings (its duration) when none is selected. See Schedules.Task
A visible unit of work Dexter is tracking, shown in a task list while it works. Tasks make in-flight work auditable — you see what Dexter has committed to, what’s in progress, and what’s done — and they persist through long sessions so nothing is silently dropped. See Chat & Tasks.Workflow
A named, opinionated procedure Dexter activates to do a specific kind of work — simulation modeling, planning, reporting. Built-in workflows ship with the product; custom workflows capture recurring procedures of your own.Most terms above also have a dedicated page with full detail — follow the links in each entry. For the product’s overall shape (simulation, planning, and Dexter), start with Key Concepts.