In highly stressed components residual stresses are created due to different manufacturing processes reducing the total stress in the operating state. Thereby automated calculation sequences can help to accelerate the design and optimization process. This work contains the structure and application of an analytic calculation tool with MS EXCEL to determine the stress conditions in highly stressed components. Thereby the calculation of the residual and operating stress conditions of different manufacturing processes of the components is implemented to the design tool. The calculations are based on standard design rules and the ASME Code, that considers certain effects of the material. Moreover the tool provides the opportunity to quote the approximate life span based on Miner´s rule. By coupling the developed sheets for calculation with the free available optimization software DAKOTA it is possible to optimize several stress conditions considering different geometric and process input values. For the validation of the developed calculation and optimization method the MS EXCEL tool is applied on highly stressed components. Extensive tests have been performed in which different optima were identified. Thereby stress is reduced up to 44 % and the load capacity is increased up to 30 % at the same level of damage.