I honestly haven't used Publisher enough to be able to advise on using Publisher this way. I've used it some for business cards and a little for greeting cards. That's about it. Hopefully, someone who is more familiar with it will come along.
I do wonder why you're using Publisher for this purpose. If you have Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, and Access are all potential applications for this, depending on which you're most familiar with. Actually, a parts list suggests a database application, which would be Access. Excel could also be used and would allow sorting on part number or other fields.