In order to obtain the strongest yellow luminescence intensity of the novel Bi2ZnB2O7: Y3+/Dy3+ phosphor, uniform design and quadratic general rotary unitized design were combined to optimize Y3+/ Dy3+ ions doping concentrations, the result shows that the optimum doping concentrations of Y3+/ Dy3+ were 4.498 mol% and 6.001 mol%, respectively. High temperature solid state method was applied to synthesize the optimal sample, and the crystal structure and luminescent properties were investigated. The emission spectra of the samples under 452 nm excitation were observed, where the blue emission band was at around 460~500 nm, the yellow emission was at around 550~610 nm and the weaker peak of the red emission is at around 650~700 nm. They were corresponding to the emissions from the 4F9/2 excited state to the 6H15/2, 6H13/2 and 6H11/2 ground states, respectively. The result indicates that the Dy3+ ions were located at a non-centrosymmetric site in the host lattice. Besides, the luminescence decay curve illustrated that the fluorescence lifetime of Dy3+ was 0.427 ms. It was found from the comparison between the optimized and the single-doped samples with the same Dy3+ concentration that Y3+-introduction could improve the emission intensity of the studied phosphor in a certain degree.