Hi Anne,
I was immediately thinking "how silly", but then the brain kicked in and told me not to be stupid.
An escalation that fires an automation script screams out to me as the solution. Now for the further thoughts.
There are three levels involved:
- Item at the ITEMSET
- Org at well the Org level
- Inventory at the SITE level. An item can be made PENDOBS at any one of the levels
Now to acknowledge two more things
- Items once made OBSOLETE cannot be returned to any other status
- You can't go to obsolete until the balance (if applicable) is zero (0) in the inventory
The concept of pending obsolescence is to:
- Stop you from buying more. Be careful. This depends on what level you have made obsolete.
- Giving you time to consume or write off any balance
So, now to reflect on the fact that Item Master and Inventory was mentioned. Firstly, if I make an Inventory item PENDOBS, yeah it makes some sense to have the system to make the Inventory Item obsolete when the balance reaches zero. Now let's look at this wider, if I have three (3) stores, let's not worry if their in different site/orgs, and make only one of the inventory items PENDOBS, you would only this process to affect that single store.
Now if I then make the item PENDOBS in all three stores
and they have now zero balances, again makes sense to make these obsolete. But why not at the Item Master or ITEMSET/ORG level? Sure you've stopped using the item in your stores, and you're intending to get rid of the item entirely. But sadly no. You have left it active at those levels. Why? Well...why not!
What I'm trying to say is that you need to look at you obsolescence process and ask are you obsoleting the item or just the item in that store or the item for that organization. How are you monitoring the items that are going through the process? How are you recalling, using or writing-off the item to draw down the balance to zero.
With that said, no I don't recall anything in the past doing what you were asking.