Add additional search criteria, and list by part number - Possible?

[orcusomega]

I am working on a site for a company that makes replacement parts. That said, there is a high dependency on the OEM part number, which is different than the part number for the remanufactured piece. We are currently storing the OEM number in the "Reference" field.

We are looking to do the following:
1) Sort by Reference Number (and display - perhaps a sub-title of the item name?). We currently have this information in the Short Desc field, but it messes up the overall look and feel when looking at other sections of the site.
2) Make this the default search option
3) In the Data Sheet tab, we would like to be able to automatically populate this section with fields already defined - Reference, etc. How is this possible?

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!