A role is a prescribed or expected behavior associated with a position or status in an organization. MDO works on role-based ownership. Information a user has access to is determined by the permissions/authorizations allocated to the user’s assigned role(s). 

Only a user with administrator access can create/ change roles. Roles are assigned with access to modules and permissions which help end users to perform different transactions in MDO. 

Some examples of roles are:  

Automobile Industry 

Plant Manager – One who oversees a plant. 

Plant Supervisor – One who supervises all plant engineers. 

Plant Engineer – One who directs the maintenance of plant equipment ensuring optimum performance. 

Organizations can decide what roles they can use for their business processes by analyzing the permissions (list of actions a role can perform) given to a role. For example, a role which permits a user to have complete access to all data and is responsible for approving all requests created in a plant, can be assigned as plant manager.