An effective and computationally efficient approach to design optimisation (physical programming) is inserted in a multiattribute decision-making process to improve concept ship design. The new problem formulation and solution framework is very effective for the generation of Pareto efficient frontier and is extended to include robustness indexes as new design attributes. It offers two key advantages. First, it captures the designer's physical preferences in forming the aggregate multiattribute function. Second, since a resulting optimal design must be sufficiently insensitive to unpredictable variations of technical performance and economic scenarios design's performance. Hence, this paper explores the effectiveness of the physical programming approach in explicitly leading to robust design. The method can be used to effectively exploit designer preference in making tradeoffs between the mean and variance of performance, by solving a bi-attribute robust design problem
