Thank you for the reply and explanation about renaming the WBS elements. Per your inquiry, I need to be able to unplug a piece of the project and then plug it in under a different project.
Once I move a WBS tree (the S/N part) to a new project, I need to maintain the drill down to activity information (production / network orders - hours, $'s, status, etc.) that was associated with the WBS when it was associated with the original project.