Ship design product archives, as one of the main types of scientific and technological archives in ship design institutes, represent the knowledge accumulation and valuable assets of scientific research work. The ship design product archive plays a direct role in supporting research and production. The characteristics and existing problems of the ship design product archives management in a ship design institute are analyzed. Specific practices for the archives management of the ship design products are proposed based on the plan-do-check-action (PDCA) method, including the management strategies, systems, and processes for the four stages of planning, doing, checking and acting. The practical results show that the proposed archives management method has achieved significant improvement in cost reduction and efficiency improvement, integration of business and archives, and support for knowledge management. It can provide references for the archives management in relevant units, and also lay a solid and reliable foundation for the subsequent utilization of archival data and knowledge acquisition.