MULTI-RESPONSE SURFACE OPTIMIZATION AND MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION: RELATIONSHIPS AND DIRECTIONS

Abstract

AbstractA common problem encountered in product or process design is the selection of optimal parameters that involves simultaneous consideration of multiple response characteristics, called a multi-response surface problem. Multi-response surface problems are quite prevalent across various application areas. Notwithstanding the importance of multi-response surface problems in practice, the development of its optimization scheme has scarcely been addressed, mainly due to the lack of a systematic way of resolving conflicts among the response characteristics. In this paper, we note that multi-response surface optimization (MRO) can be viewed as a multi-objective optimization (MOO) and that various techniques developed in MOO can be well utilized to deal with MRO problems. We first discuss what has been done in the MRO area, and then relate this to MOO developments. We also show that the existing MRO approaches are, in fact, special forms of MOO. The application of MOO principles and methodologies to MRO problems provides opportunities and challenges for MRO research and practice.