Hi Daniel J Moore 

Substitution product  field (SBSITM) is the new product replacing automatically the current product record upon sales entry after the substitution date. Example from phamaceutic area , starting next year the legislation changed and you can no longer sell a medecine without new legal sentence on the instruction slip. So, you would need to create a new product code to identify the new form of the medecine and starting 1-jan-2024 (substitution date), you can only sell the new product code.

=> very useful to retire legacy Finish Good (if sold) items!!

Alternate product field (RPLITM) identify the product that will be suggested when performing a manual replacement of a component on a work order:

=> Useful when you can swap components in your manufacturing process to care for exceptional stock shortage.

Note: when retiring a product aside using the product status you can as well use the start / end dates to better manage the transition (on the first Management tab):
-LIFSTRDAT will prevent to enter sales order before this date (usually for new go to market product)
-LIFENDDAT will prevent to enter purchase order after this date (usually for product retirement)

You can manage as well replacement while stock last (for the components production  - raw material, semi-finished - only) . This usage will require the use of a phantom product. The specificities of a phantom product is when a WO is created the phantom is automatically replaced by its own components in the list of components of the work order. Beware this "phantom effect" only occurs if there is no stock available on the phantom (Yes a phantom can be managed into stock in Sage X3). The benefit is to set the product-to-replace as a Phantom and to create a BoM with the new product as component. As long as you have the product-to-replace in stock, work orders will use it. When you run out of stock, the "phantom effect" will automatically swap the product-to-replace by the new product. And the best is: it's totally compliant with the MRP processing!

Julien,

Thank you.  That was a great example of a real world use case.  We will be using your explanation to further educate our project leader. 

I do have a follow-up question that I forgot to ask about originally.  If we retire the legacy item for our new "Substitution Product" and use those end dates on legacy.  We use EDI for much of our orders.  Do you know how the system would be have in case a customer attempts to submit a legacy product after the end date? 

I don't know for sure, but I expect the EDI to sent an error mirroring the same blockage that you would experience with a manuel entry.