Abstract-The objective of this work is to make use of conventional response surface methodologies and basic elements from metaheuristic algorithms in the design of influential variables for engineering systems. A method of steepest ascent and its integrated approaches with simulated annealing, firefly and ant colony optimisation algorithms, are compared on a simulated continuous stirred tank reactor or CSTR with various levels of signal noise. These metaheuristics contain the complicatedness in terms of their parameters. An additional series of computational experiments were conducted and analysed in terms of the minimax and mean squared error performance measures including Taguchi's signal to noise ratio. Proper levels of these parameters are analysed to recommend the best parameter choices. On the experimental results of all the algorithms with the preferable levels of parameters, the method of steepest ascent seems to be the most efficient on the CSTR surface at the lower levels of noise. However, the integrated approaches with all simulated annealing, firefly and ant colony optimisation elements work well when the standard deviation of the noise is at higher levels. Although the average, the standard deviation of the greatest actual concentration of the product and percentage of sequences ended at the optimum from the integrated algorithms with simulated annealing and ant colony optimisation seem to be better, they need more average design points, especially with ant colony optimisation element, to converge to the optimum when compared.