When building an automotive or commercial vehicle price comparison engine, the biggest data bottleneck isn't scraping or API rate limits—it's inconsistent OEM and OES part numbers across different supplier feeds.

While building the catalog pipeline for CrazyPartSnatcher (a real-time price comparison platform for commercial vehicle, truck, and trailer spare parts), we constantly ran into the same matching issue across our database tables.

The Problem: 1 Part, 5 Different String Formats

A single truck brake pad, sensor, or filter from manufacturers like MAN, Mercedes-Benz Trucks, DAF, Bosch, Hella, Febi Bilstein, or DT Spare Parts shows up differently in almost every CSV feed and marketplace listing:

• Supplier A: 81.50110-0144
• Supplier B: 81 50110 0144
• Marketplace listing: 81501100144
• Mercedes OEM format: A 000 420 00 20 vs A0004200020
• Bosch 10-digit format: 0 986 479 R66

If a workshop mechanic searches for 81.50110.0144 and your SQL query only checks the raw string—or strips characters inconsistently—you miss valid supplier offers.

The Solution: @crazypartsnatcher/oem-normalizer

Instead of keeping this regex and formatting logic locked inside our private backend, we extracted it into a lightweight, zero-dependency TypeScript/JavaScript package and published it on npm and GitHub.

It handles four core tasks out of the box:

1. normalizeOem(input): Strips formatting noise (dots, dashes, spaces, slashes) into a strict uppercase indexable string for fast SQL/MariaDB lookups.
2. generateSearchVariants(input): Generates common vendor-specific spacing and punctuation variants for fuzzy search queries.
3. detectManufacturerFormat(input): Identifies probable OEM/Aftermarket numbering schemas (e.g., Bosch 10-digit, Mercedes A-numbers, MAN formats).
4. buildPartSearchUrl(oemNumber): Builds direct lookup URLs for live price checks.

Quick Usage Example

Install via npm:

npm install @crazypartsnatcher/oem-normalizer

Use it in your Node.js / TypeScript pipeline or frontend search:

import { 
  normalizeOem, 
  generateSearchVariants, 
  detectManufacturerFormat,
  buildPartSearchUrl 
} from '@crazypartsnatcher/oem-normalizer';

const rawInput = '81.50110-0144';
const cleanKey = normalizeOem(rawInput); // "81501100144"
const variants = generateSearchVariants(rawInput);
const formats = detectManufacturerFormat(rawInput);
const comparisonUrl = buildPartSearchUrl(cleanKey);

Live Interactive Playground & Source Code

We also built a browser-based interactive tester on GitHub Pages where you can paste truck and trailer OEM numbers to test the normalizer and jump straight to live aftermarket price comparisons for brands like Bosch, Hella, Brembo, ATE, Mahle, and Febi Bilstein:

• Live Production Search: CrazyPartSnatcher – Nutzfahrzeug & Lkw-Ersatzteile Preisvergleich
• Interactive OEM Tester (GitHub Pages): OEM Part Normalizer Docs & Playground
• npm Package: @crazypartsnatcher/oem-normalizer on npm
• GitHub Repository: Tom7668h/oem-part-normalizer

If you are working with TecDoc data, automotive catalogs, or supplier feeds, feel free to fork the repo or open a PR with additional manufacturer regex patterns!