The first step in many applications of response surface methodology is typically the screening process. Variable selection plays an important role in screening experiments when a large number of potential factors are introduced in a preliminary study. Traditional approaches, such as the best subset variable selection and stepwise deletion, may not be appropriate in this situation. In this paper we introduce a variable selection procedure via penalized least squares with the SCAD penalty. An algorithm to find the penalized least squares solution is suggested, and a standard error formula for the penalized least squares estimate is derived. With a proper choice of the regularization parameter, it is shown that the resulting estimate is root n consistent and possesses an oracle property; namely, it works as well as if the correct submodel were known. An automatic and data-driven approach was proposed to select the regularization parameter. Examples are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the newly proposed approach. The computer codes (written in MATLAB) to perform all calculation are available through the authors for an automatic data-driven variable selection procedure.