Recently, a linear motor has been becoming widely popular in office automation (OA) and factory automation (FA) systems due to its simple structure, high-speed operation, and precise positioning. In this study, a cored linear motor was designed to have a large thrust and small ripple because these are considered as indicators of motor performance. The thrust and ripple of the linear motor can be calculated by a finite element method (FEM) commercial program such as ANSYS. To design the cored linear motor, first, the design variables were selected through ANOM and ANOVA. The response surface method was applied to formulate the cost function of the second-order regression model, which can evaluate motor performance. By optimizing the cost function, it was possible to realize quickly the optimum design for a cored linear motor. As a result, the performance of the motor was improved.