PERT in product design application

On account of the high effective and complexity of the design activities, it is necessary to have a time management in the design process. PERT is a method for making the reasonable plan and controlling to the project overall time, before the project was carried out. If this method applies in the product design project, it can enhance working efficiency of the design activity. In order to establish the reasonable project activity sequence, the design manager can make the detailed division and three kind of time estimates (optimistic time, most possible time and pessimistic time) of the product design procedure¿s events. Through the analysis and combination of activity sequence, the manager can calculate most early start-working time, most late start-working time as well as the total time difference of each active event,the market investigation, the summarized report of survey, setting up the design team and so on, and may find out the design activities in the critical path. By controlling these activities, the design manager can reduce the product development time effectively, and guarantee the highly effective of product design.