Every production system for extrusion processes consists of a cooling section. The optimal design for the cooling section is not easy to find and influences the investment costs, the operating costs and the product quality significantly. The chillWARE® software system is able to calculate the whole cooling situation for extruded products (e.g. pipes, coextruded pipes, cables, sheets, films, profiles) and to give information about the necessary space, the number of spray cooling sections or the temperature level for the cooling fluid. In a completely new feature, an optimization algorithm was integrated into the software system to propose an optimal design for the complete cooling section using only a few necessary process parameters like the product dimension, the available maximum space for the production plant or the type of the processed polymer. The optimization system can be enabled to reach an optimal distribution of residual stresses within the product wall or (as an example) to realize the minimal operating or investment costs. The whole simulation system is based on the method of finite differences/elements and can be controlled using an intuitive graphical user interface and an automated report function.