Here is a great tip from Alexander on how he was able to actually delete items from Maximo and skipped changing the status to OBSOLETE. He actually was able to remove the record from the Maximo database completely.

This way is available only if there are no appropriate records in tables related to ITEM (for example, an item isn’t stored at a storeroom)

1) We should create an object structure which consists of only one MBO – ITEMORGINFO. I named it as “MXITEMORGINFO”. Then we need to deploy a proper web service.
2) There is another object structure created by system as default – MXITEM. Deploy a MXITEM web service too.
3) Now we delete ITEMORGINFO records related to the item.

Send following SOAP request to MXITEMORGINFO endpoint:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns="http://www.ibm.com/maximo">
<soapenv:Header/>
<soapenv:Body>
<DeleteMXITEMORGINFO>
<MXITEMORGINFOSet>
<ITEMORGINFO>
<ITEMNUM>SAMPLE_ITEM</ITEMNUM>
<ITEMSETID>SAMPLE_ITEMSET</ITEMSETID>
<ORGID>SAMPLE_ORGID</ORGID>
</ITEMORGINFO>
</MXITEMORGINFOSet>
</DeleteMXITEMORGINFO>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

And you should send this request with changing of ORGID field as many times as a quantity of organizations in your system in order to clean ITEMORGINFO table from all records related to your item.

4) And the last step is sending SOAP request to MXITEM web service to delete an item:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns="http://www.ibm.com/maximo">
<soapenv:Header/>
<soapenv:Body>
<DeleteMXITEM>
<MXITEMSet>
<ITEM>
<ITEMNUM>SAMPLE_ITEM</ITEMNUM>
<ITEMSETID>SAMPLE_ITEMSET</ITEMSETID>
<ORGID>SAMPLE_ORGID</ORGID>
</ITEM>
</MXITEMSet>
</DeleteMXITEM>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Your item should now be deleted.