In shipbuilding, typically the design objective is based on technical performance of the system at a given operational profile. This paper proposes a methodology to improve life cycle value of target ships by introducing a real option approach. The proposed methodology can consider options of repairs and retrofits in a dockyard very early, during conceptual ship design. A proposed flexible design is evaluated by using a ship performance simulator and a wide range of market fluctuation scenarios generated by the Monte-Carlo method. This methodology was applied to the case study of Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) life cycle value evaluation. The result shows that flexible design including real options can significantly aid in consideration of market fluctuation scenarios in comparison with recent typical design optimization approaches.