Limitations of the spiral method description have been recognized, specifically, the inadequate addressing of concurrent engineering practices and life cycle concerns. One proposed solution to remedy these shortfalls is Decision-Based Design for the design of ships [Mistree, et al. (1990)]. This method divides the design process into subproblems that are solved in hierarchical order. The primary challenge to implementing this method is to define the hierarchical decomposition of the design process sub problems. No rigorous and generalizable methods are defined as part of this implementation.