The use of glass in technology fields such as civil engineering, transports or optics brings a challenging issue for the manufacturer since the service life of a brittle material workpiece is mainly determined by its surface finish. Indeed, a manufacturing process based on material removal generates scratches and cracks that could propagate and lead to the workpieces fracture. Therefore, machined glass workpieces are mainly obtained by rough grinding followed by an extensive polishing phase to smoothen the surface and eliminate the visible damages. This process could be optimized if roughly ground surfaces match service life criteria – i.e. reduced scratches amount and size. Moreover the grinding forces can also induce sub-surface damages (SSD) that could be limited with appropriate cutting parameters. This paper focuses on the optimization of grinding parameters with regards to the surface finish in order to maximize the service life of a glass workpiece. A central composite design of experiments has been used to define experimental tries that consist in down-grinding glass samples with various feed rate, depth of cut and wheel speed values. Relevancy of the roughness parameters is discussed and the authors propose to use the roughness parameters derived from the Abbott-Firestone curve Rvk and the material ratio 100 – Mr2 to characterize the surface finishes of the ground glass samples. Using the design of experiments, surface responses have been modeled for each roughness parameter to investigate the influence of the cutting parameters as well as the manufacturing strategy. Impact of the cutting parameters is also discussed with regards to the fracture strength of the ground glass samples provided through a three-points flexural bend test.