“…Second step provides optimal or near-optimal solution(s) to the overall optimisation problem formulated through the previous mathematical models. In the literature, the main optimisation tools and techniques applied are based on Taguchi method (Ghani, Choudhury and Hassan, 2004;Zhang, Chen and Kirby, 2007), response surface design (Suresh, Rao and Deshmukh, 2002), genetic algorithms (Liu, Zuo and Wang, 1999b;Suresh, Rao and Deshmukh, 2002;Cus and Balic, 2003;Chien and Chou, 2001) and simulated annealing (Juan, Yu and Lee, 2003).…”