This paper presents experimental and simulation study to minimize residual stress in cylindrical deep-drawing process. Eight significant process parameters including initial blank thickness, punch and die shoulder radii, blank-holder force, punch velocity, and coefficients of friction between die-blank, holder-blank, and punch-blank are considered. According to number of parameters, the Taguchi's method is employed to perform design of experiments. The die is designed and manufactured, and the experiments are carried out using AISI 1006 carbon steel sheet. Hole-drilling method based on ASTM E 837-99 standard is applied to measure the residual stresses in drawn cups. Moreover, the deep-drawing process is simulated wholly using ABAQUS/explicit software and the accuracy of finite-element model is verified using experimental results. Finally, the analysis of variance method is applied to define the most important parameters and obtain an optimum level to minimize the residual stress in cylindrical deep-drawing process. Keywords Deep-drawing Á Residual stress Á Taguchi method Á Optimization Á Finite-element method Á Experiments List of symbols BHF Blank-holder force (KN) r d Die shoulder radius (mm) r p Punch shoulder radius (mm) l d Coefficient of friction between die and blank l h Coefficient of friction between holder and blank l p Coefficient of friction between punch and blank