Cylinder bores of automotive engines are 'engineered' surfaces that are processed using multi-stage honing process to generate multiple layers of micro geometry for meeting the different functional requirements of the piston assembly system. The final processed surfaces should comply with several surface topographic specifications that are relevant for the good tribological performance of the engine. Selection of the process parameters in three stages of honing to obtain multiple surface topographic characteristics simultaneously within the specification tolerance is an important module of the process planning and is often posed as a challenging task for the process engineers. This paper presents a strategy by combining the robust process design and gray-relational analysis to evolve the operating levels of honing process parameters in rough, finish and plateau honing stages targeting to meet multiple surface topographic specifications on the final running surface of the cylinder bores. Honing experiments were conducted in three stages namely rough, finish and plateau honing on cast iron cylinder liners by varying four honing process parameters such as rotational speed, oscillatory speed, pressure and honing time. Abbott-Firestone curve based functional parameters (R-k, R-Pk, R-Vk, M-r1 and M-r2) coupled with mean roughness depth (Rz, DIN/ISO) and honing angle were measured and identified as the surface quality performance targets to be achieved. The experimental results have shown that the proposed approach is effective to generate cylinder liner surface that would simultaneously meet the explicit surface topographic specifications currently practiced by the industry. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.