The minimum number is actually just two:

One default for New parts with everything allowed, this is what I would recommend, we label the name as A = Active

Then an opposite is needed for items that Inactive/Discontinued, which we call Do Not Sell (DNS).  Our code is J, but that is just from a legacy system.  It could as well be I for Inactive.

We have a couple of others for Kanban parts and parts planned for scrap/obsolescence.

I wouldn’t understand embedding responsibility by department into the part status.  Responsibility is through the Buyer/Planner/Manuf Engineer fields.

The IFS suggestion for the field seems reasonable also:

It can be A (Active), E (Experiment Part), I (Inactive), or O (Expired). 

I feel the more complicated you make the information in this field, the more likely it is to be wrong, or the more effort it is to maintain it.

Thanks for this quick and very usefull reply. Fully agree. Embedding responsibilities was not so much about the responsibility like you described, but an attempt to embed a workflow because the inventory part holds all kind of data which should be handled by different departments (engineering, planning, procurement, finance) when creating a new part. Having said that: that could also easily be solved by a custom field “Department to take action”.

Moved to Supply Chain.