Today's research activities covering the field of improving the properties of cutting tools are concentrated on optimizing manufacturing technologies and tool geometry as well as improved alloying of special cutting materials and coating of tools. Especially in the area of coated cutting inserts a high potential to enhance the wear resistance still exists. As a result of the reduced machinability of new cutting tool materials high mechanical and thermal loads during grinding influence the subsurface properties heavily. Hence, strong gradieted residual stresses are induced in the subsurface of the tools during grinding. Even with optimized coating parameters deposited PVD-coatings fail due to insufficient subsurface properties of the substrates. In this paper the influence of residual stress states in subsurface layers of ground cemented carbides on interface strength of PVD-coatings are described. WC-based cemented carbides coated by PVD-deposited (Ti,AI)N layers were used. Considered topics are the influence of grinding, micro blasting and water peening on the subsurface residual stress state of the substrate. Dependencies between stress distribution in subsurface layers and interface strength are highlighted.