Thomas,
What I'm thinking of is being able to quickly repair (or modify) a model so that the component axes of all original instances of the components would be aligned with the global axes. My last remark was intended to say that you would select a set of components in a model and if there's an original instance in the selection, its axes would get changed to align with the global axes.
Last night someone sent me a cabinet model. He had drawn some of the components laying down on the ground plane and then rotated them up into their proper position. When a model is drawn that way, it appears that materials are randomly applied and it is difficult for some to make sense of what's happening. Also, as you know, if the component is made laying down but used standing up, every time it is inserted into a model, its orientation has to be corrected. Correcting the axes orientation up front would eliminate the need to do that correction later.
Thanks for your thoughts.