Understanding Product Lifecycle State in Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management

Overview

A released product or product variant can be associated with a product lifecycle state that documents in which lifecycle state a specific product or variant is currently in. You can define any number of product lifecycle states by assigning a state name and description. You can select one lifecycle state as the default state for new released products. Released product variants inherit their product lifecycle state from their released product master on creation. When changing the lifecycle state on a released product master, you can choose to update all existing variants that have the same original state.

Create a product lifecycle state

1. Go to Product information management > Setup > Product lifecycle state.
2. Click New.
3. In the State field, type a value.
4. In the Description field, type a value.

Associate product lifecycle states to released products

There are multiple ways to associate a product lifecycle state to released products or product variants.

• On creation of a new released product, the default Product lifecycle state is automatically assigned.
• On release of a product to a legal entity, the default Product lifecycle state is automatically assigned.
• On release of a product variant to a legal entity, the Product lifecycle state associated to the released product master in this legal entity is automatically assigned to the new variant.

You can manually update the product lifecycle state by using:

• The Released products list page or Details view.
• The Released product variants list page or Details view.
• Find the obsolete products or product variants based on demand and associate a lifecycle state.

Impact on master planning

The product lifecycle state has only one control flag: Is active for planning. By default, this is set to Yes for all created product lifecycle states, but it can be changed to No. When set to No, the associated released products or released product variants are:

• Excluded from master planning.
• Excluded from BOM-level calculation.

Default migration, import, and export

The product lifecycle states are supported by data entities, and the lifecycle state can be set to a variable state through either the released product data entity or the released variant data entity.

Find obsolete products and products variants

You can run a simulation analysis to find the obsolete released products or product variants and then update their product lifecycle status. By running the analysis in a simulation mode, the products and product variants identified as obsolete are displayed in a specific form, where they can easily be reviewed. The analysis searches for transactions and specific master data to identify products that have no demand within a variable period and no master data that can result in demand. New released products within a variable period can be excluded from the analysis. When the analysis simulation returns the expected result, the user can run the analysis and set a new product lifecycle state to all products identified as obsolete by the analysis.