............Not necessarily. In automotive, it’s common to keep the same part number for newer revisions of parts where the newer revision is a drop-in replacement for the old.................
I’m sure that is true, but then how is the parts department at your local chevy dealer know that he is dispensing the safety modified part????
Maybe a suffix, like 12345678A????
If the part is a safety replacement, then yes, it shouldn’t have the exact same number, for exactly the reason you mention. But it wasn’t clear to me from the article that that’s how this was viewed.