A computer implemented method and system for identifying one or more part numbers stored in a digital memory comprises parsing of each part number into its primary and secondary components and assigning a relevance score to each; parsing a query part number into one or more primary and secondary components and assigning a relevance score to each query component; identifying each stored part number that has at least one component that matches a query component; calculating for each identified part number a first sum equal to the sum of the relevance scores of the query components that match a component of the identified stored part number; and a second sum equal to the sum of the relevance scores of the components of the identified stored part number that match a query component; and sorting the identified stored part numbers as a function of said first and second sums.