In metal cutting industries, in order to determine the quality of the product the surface roughness is used as the crucial factor. Good surface roughness not only achieving the quality but also it reduces the manufacturing cost. AISI 304 is a high quality; high tensile stainless steel usually gives good ductility and shock resisting properties combined with resistance to wear. This type of material is generally regarded as being difficult to machine. Here the Taguchi method, gray relational analysis and response surface methodology was utilized to design and optimize the machining parameters in turning of AISI 304 stainless steel. The turning parameters selected for optimizations are cutting speed of 450,550 and 650 rpm, the depth of cut of 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 mm and feed rate of 0.2,0.25 and 0.3mm/rev. the experiment was designed and carried out based on the standard L9 Taguchi orthogonal array.