Product listing display sort order catalog-side?

I need to find a way to display the product Sort Order on the catalog (customer) side, in the product listing (I believe that's what it's called, the listing of products in a category or sub-cat).
I'm hoping there would be an easy way to do it because I'm not good with code. I checked in the Admin and I can't find any switches for that.

Exactly what thing are you trying to sort?

Just to elaborate a little more. I'm hoping to set an image in the category (or sub category) description, which shows a blown-up parts breakdown, with each part in the image assigned a reference number. I want the customer to be able to quickly and easily find the product that's being referenced to. Example: Reference ID# 23 in the image refers to a product in this category, and the customer would scroll down to product #23 in the product listing. I thought about putting the ref number in the product image, but that creates another problem, because that product might be copied from a different category with a breakdown image, and have a different ref number in that other category. So it seems to me that having the default sort order displayed might be the best way.

I just thought about it that displaying the sort order would not work either, it would be the same throughout the linked products.
Any other suggestions on achieving this? Other than a lot of duplicate products, I can't think how.