Abstract: In order to achieve sufficient as well as effective measuring sensing data, an optimal sensor distribution system should be carried out so that maximal error source detection capability is enabled. The spatial relationship between three types of error sources and measuring sensing data in multistation manufacturing system was established based on the state space model, and a variancedetecting sensitivity index was proposed for characterizing the detection ability of process variance components. Then a dataminingguided evolutionary method was devised to solve the optimization problem for sensor distribution. An illustrative example was performed to validate the importance and effectiveness of the proposed analytical procedure.