1. A method of configuring a product, said method comprising the steps of: (a) creating an electronic object-oriented product model representative of a product line with a first software tool that is installed on a computer, wherein: (i) said product model includes an electronic profile model representative of a product within the product line; (ii) said profile model includes an electronic part model representative of a part within the product; (iii) said part model includes an electronic part quality model representative of an attribute of the part; and (iv) said product model further includes a model number manager having one or more character segments that treat portions of a meaningful model number separately, said model number manager performs at least one of the following steps: 1) utilizing the meaningful model number to access information stored in said object-oriented product model; or 2) generating a meaningful model number from information stored in said object-oriented product model; and (b) making the information stored in said product model available to one or more software applications with a second software tool that is installed on a computer, wherein each of said one or more character segments is capable of exchanging information with said part quality model, and a first character segment is capable of validating the portion of the meaningful model number by exchanging information with a second character segment, a process referred to as horizontal validation.