Also search for part numbers, don't just match a specific part

[kasbah]

Example from @InaneCoding. "BAS16J" locks onto a part. If we also did a text search using this input we would get more suggestions.

Another problem one where the manufacturers part number in our BOM is for "BAS16J" and the tool gets locked on to the octopart part https://octopart.com/bas16j-nxp+semiconductors-20318393 (which has no stock at digikey/rs/mouser/farnell), but it won't give any other suggestions. Whereas when you search "BAS16J" on octopart.com you get others such as https://octopart.com/bas16j%2C115-nexperia-78738860 - this is a more difficult part because NXP sold its discretes business which is now Nexperia, plus has extra package codes on the end.

Also part "BLM18AG102SN1B" which octopart can't find, but actually the final 'B' is just a packaging code and so plenty of results for 'BLM18AG102SN1D' - though the tool isn't doing anything "wrong" per-say, as you can't know which characters are crucial and which aren't. Either the designer should leave off the packaging codes, or deal with the manual task of finding an alternative. As above though, tool possible could find some "close-ish" matches and suggest with a warning, this is what the person would do manually once they come across this issue.