Temperature fluctuation is the primary reason for gradual failure of IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) module in inverter system, and overall thermal management is an effective way to smooth temperature fluctuation and prolong the service life of IGBT module. Currently there are a series of problems with the module temperature management method of inverter system, including complicated control method, limited adjustment range, slow response, and poor control accuracy, etc. To cope with these matters, this paper aims to study a thermal management strategy for inverter system. At first, this paper built a model for temperature prediction and control of inverter system based on linear timevarying state space, the model measures system state based on estimation and can calculate the control variables with the mutual effect between different variables taken into consideration but without the necessity of system decoupling. Then, this paper proposed a thermal management strategy for inverter system based on predictive control and optimized it further. At last, the validity of the constructed model and the proposed strategy were verified by experimental results.