1. Introduction

The concept of optimization is introduced and the different topics of the optimization theory that will be treated in the rest of the book are briefly described. The layout of the book is presented in the end of the chapter. The generic optimization process is presented as a five steps path involving design of experiments, response surface modelling, deterministic optimization, stochastic optimization, and robust design analysis. Even though, strictly speaking, only the third and the fourth steps are optimization algorithms, these are often insufficient due to the large complexity of real-life optimization problems such as those that may be found in industry. This is the reason why other aspects that may help in setting up a methodology for tackling complicated problems are introduced in steps one and two. Yet, this is not sufficient as optimization algorithms can find optimum solutions for the problem at hand, but they are not able to grant us these solutions are also reliable, or robust. The role of reliability is not to be underestimated, and this is what we try to address in the fifth step.