Using Extended Activity-Network Diagram to Built a Product Design Workflow Model

A complex mechanical product to be designed contains a serious of procedures named processes or activities those form a complicated network diagram. In order to improve the design quality and shorten the design cycle time for promoting the enterprises' core competitiveness, this paper presents a product design workflow model by using the extended activity-network diagram technique. In this workflow model, task nodes contain process nodes and atom nodes in different granularity. A physical model is constructed and a prototype system is implemented for the product design workflow. The proposed model can map and navigate the design workflow of complex products well.