The military community has considerable experience in the areas of procuring and managing large systems. These systems are often expected to perform their intended function over a period of several years and as a result, they will require an extensive support structure consisting of personnel, equipment and spare assets. For this reason, Logistics Management has always been an important field within the military and is gaining recognition within private industry as well. The evolutionary process which starts with the identification of a need and continues through design, production and retirement is known as a product's life cycle. Studies have shown that the decisions which are made initially, during the design of the product, will determine 80% of the total system costs. Several efforts have been initiated to improve the product design process and emphasize the life cycle approach. These include; Concurrent Engineering, Logistics Support Analysis (LSA) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD). These efforts necessitate an overhaul of the decision-making methods used in the product design process. Consequently, within the military community and private industry, the time-honored sequential-hierarchical-decision approach to design is being replaced with concurrent decision-making. The sequential process of the hierarchical method can lead to suboptimal designs which significantly increase manufacturing and follow-on support costs. / Ph. D.