My current understanding of PDM and/or ERP softwares is that every part must have a unique identifier (part/drawing number).

We currently use a third part serial number generator for our part numbers such as 2-12345.

The "2" indicates an 11x17 drawing

The 12345 is the root of the part number.

If a part is configured, we will add a -XX, such as 2-12345-01.

The configuration tree would look like:

2-12345

2-12345-01

2-12345-02

My question is, how does PDM and/or ERP software handle configuration names? Will we need to pull a unique part number for every configuration and scrap the base part number? Such as:

2-12345

2-12564

2-12945

Or is it possible to have a serial number inside of a serial number? If that makes sense.