The Wire EDM process has several machining parameters such as pulse on time, pulse off time, supply voltage, peak current, wire speed, wire feed, machining time, and rate of flushing, material and size of the wire, dielectric type, viscosity and other flow characteristics. Several researchers have made an attempt to improve the performance characteristics namely surface roughness, cutting speed, dimensional accuracy, dimensional deviation and material removal rate. Selection of optimal machining parameters plays an important role. Improperly selected parameters may result in serious problems like shot circuit and wire breakage. Hence there is a huge demand for research studies to find out the optimal machining parameters of WEDM. In this paper; a detailed review on effect of machining parameters on performance characteristics of Wire EDM process is presented and effect of optimization of process parameters is discussed.