I have a certain product that I need to show up first in its assigned category. I'm not sure how our products are sorting now, maybe alphabetical or by part number. Regardless, I need a particular product to show up at the top of the category it is assigned to. I saw a 'Product Order' field on the product admin page but it doesn't seem to have any effect. Thank you for any clues.

If you go into admin>main settings, you can set the sort for products.
Change it to product order and you can them set your products numerically in the admin.

David