Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

Issue with URL Keys for variant products now appearing on Frontend

We are experiencing an issue with our Magento store:

New URLs are being generated upon saving products, pointing to the configurable’s product variant, and causing them to appear on the frontend.

Here’s an example:

I have a configurable product “Plastipak Syringe” with about ten variants. One of the URL keys was:
Request Path: /seringue-plastipak.html
Target Path: catalog/product/view/id/23046/category/1

However, now, after saving the product, a new Request Paths have been wildly generated

Request Path: seringue-plastipak.html (without the “/” here)
Target Path: catalog/product/view/id/23039

Big problem is “ID 23039” is one of the variant of the model 23046.

Consequently, we end up with two products with the same name on the frontend. One is the configurable product, and the other is a variant, a simple product set to “do not show individually” which is still visible…

As days go by, the problem is worsening, and it’s becoming quite chaotic.

Please help 🙁