Productivity is of major economic significance in the current competitive global market. Due to growing costs and globalization of the marketplace, improvements in productivity require the creation of a reliable design through concurrent systems analysis in the shortest possible time. This is particularly important for designing complex engineering systems such as aircraft, automobiles and ships. The Robust Concept Exploration Method (RCEM) embodies a systematic approach that can be used to enhance design productivity by both increasing design knowledge in the early stages of designs and maintaining design freedom throughout the design process. Given the overall design requirements and the systems analysis packages, the RCEM is used to evaluate quickly the design alternatives and to develop comprehen sive, robust, flexible, and modifiable top-level specifications. Central to the RCEM is the integration of robust design techniques, Suh's de sign axioms, and the Response Surface Methodology within the framework of a mathematical construct, called the compromise Decision Support Problem, for multi-objective design problems. The high speed civil transport (hsct) aircraft is used as an example to demonstrate our approach.