An Overview of Optimization Formulations for Multiresponse Surface Problems

Many industrial applications involve more than one quality characteristic. For example, in robust parameter design, the quality characteristics include the process mean and process variance. Such applications lead to multiresponse surface problems in which it is necessary to determine optimal operating conditions according to some specified optimization criterion involving the quality characteristics. The purpose of this article is to address this problem from a multiobjective decision‐making framework. The foremost approaches in multiresponse optimization are categorized and integrated. Guidelines are presented to help select appropriate formulations. Moreover, the applicability and computational aspects of the methods in various decision‐making contexts are discussed. Numerical examples are also provided.