LeafData Bug 4514: Phantom Waste Inventory
The Akeran/LeafData system in Washington is full of phantom waste materials. Literally, millions of bogus, stuck, in-accurate records.
There is a bug that's been open for ages in LeafData (ES-4514) where new Inventory Lots are created on Plant Destruction. These new Inventory Lots are Waste types, but the Waste type is not editable, and the Inventory Lot is not modifiable. These items become orphans/phantoms, not editable, not fixable either.
LeafData Plant Destruction Process
In the LeafData system when plants are destroyed this must be recorded. The system then generates an DI, IN and TY type of objects that represent this material. The next step is to use the API to confirm the destruction of the DI type object.
LeafData Destruction Bug
When confirming the DI number for these objects the IN lot did not zero out. Additionally, the TY number is not discover-able in LeafData -- searching for that Global ID is a empty response.
We end up with this item that is stuck. It's Waste, we can't adjust zero it, the system says to use dispose_item. But dispose_item (and have tried it again and again) doesn't clear this item. And we cannot change the Product Type (TY) as that's locked. And just for grins, when one attempts to modify through the LeafData API the reponse indicates success but no data is modified.
Impact to Track-and-Trace
The big impact on this for the track-and-trace system is that it's incorrect. As a result of this bug there are millions of records in the system that indicate some material is physically on-location when it is not. The electronic records do not match objective reality -- and are blocked from being repaired.
In some cases these phantom inventory items for LicenseA as an example have their lots linked to Product Types (the phantom waste) that belongs to a different license. It's another case of cross-license data contamination of LeafData.
However, these millions of phantom waste are not nearly as bad as the millions of retail sales with unknown package weight.