The MAESTRI project aims to advance the sustainability of European manufacturing and process industries. That will be achieved thanks to developing the MAESTRI Total Efficiency Framework (MTEF), which is a MAESTRI management system in the form of a flexible and scalable platform and methodology.

The MTEF is based on four pillars (Ferrera et al. n.d.):
a) an effective management system targeted at process and continuous improvement;
b) Efficiency assessment tools to support improvements, optimisation strategies and decision support;
c) Industrial Symbiosis paradigm to gain value from waste and energy exchange;
d) an Internet-of-Things infrastructure to support easy integration and data exchange among shop-floor, business systems and tools.

The MAESTRI management system, which is described in this chapter as a one of the pillars supporting MTEF, combines two groups of elements (Figure 1):
a) conventional Lean Management System;
b) MAESTRI specific elements – to meet the requirements caused by specific conditions of process industry, a set of methods and tools has been proposed: Eco Orbit View, Focused Gemba Walk, Retrospective Analysis, Eco Lean Management Boards.

There are two main types of production process in manufacturing industry: continuous process (process industry) and discrete process (mechanical manufacturing). Continuous process is a process with continuity of introducing raw material to the environment of transformation and withdrawing completed product. Industry sectors that can be classified as continuous processes are: chemicals, synthetic fibres, oil refining, pulp, paper, natural gas processing, continuous casting of steel, synthetic fibres etc. Processes with individual or separate unit production like automobiles, furniture or toys are called discrete processes. These type of processes characterize by individual or separate unit production.

The main difference between process industry and mechanical manufacturing is the way of raw material transformation. In process industry raw material experiences a transformational change as it becomes a product, opposed to a reconfiguration change in mechanical manufacturing. Another significant difference between process industry and mechanical manufacturing is the manner in which the process of transformation occurs. In discreet manufacturing the changes that occur in the raw material so that it becomes a finished product are achieved by applying a direct touch either personally by operators (like in assembly) or by some tools or devices (e.g. cutting tool). On the contrary, in the process industries the raw material changes itself by applying the proper environment conditions.
The differences mentioned above cause that both types of manufacturing processes require different approaches to  process improvement as well as Lean Manufacturing implementation and face different types of difficulties as well.
Generally continuous processes are more capital-intensive. That results from the higher dependence on machinery and equipment both in terms of the production process organisation and of implementing improvements. Improving  availability of finished goods, flexibility and product quality can be achieved rather by mitigating machine problems than
by improving operators’ work by implementing such Lean Management techniques like e.g. 5S and workstation organisation.
Discrete processes are more labour intensive due to the fact that operators generate most added value to the process. Effective improvements focus on standardization of operators’ work for example by 5S which makes better results and has a wider range of application than in the continuous processes.

To provide relevant solutions to the specific conditions of process industries, the following methods and tools have been proposed:

Eco Orbit View (EOV) is a simple method intended to indicate areas in the production process where the company should focus the improvement activities in order to get simultaneous improvement of business and environmental performance.
The Eco Orbit View analysis is performed in 5 steps:
1. Identification of production process steps (for a selected product family)
2. Identification of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) relevant for each process step
3. Identification of Key Environmental Performance Indicators (KEPIs) or Environmental
Aspects relevant for each process step
4. Identification links and synergies between KPIs and KEPIs
5. Prioritisation of improvement ideas, selection of the potential improvement areas
In summary, the Eco Orbit View shows KPIs (reflecting company needs) and KEPIs or environmental aspects (reflecting environmental needs) side by side for chosen process steps. The analysis results in the indication of potential improvement areas, reflecting the needs of the company to improve both the economic and environmental performance.
Thus, the areas where the eco-efficiency of the company may be improved can be identified.

Focused Gemba Walk is a method for a very quick analysis focused on a potential improvement area identified during an Eco Orbit View analysis. The result of this analysis should be low-cost organisational (process) improvement ideas, which could be implemented within a few following weeks.
Focused Gemba Walk is based on the Go-See-Act approach.
1. Go - go to the place where the problem occurs.
2. See - observe the process from 6 perspectives: Method; Man; Machine; Material; Measurement; Environment
3. Act - based on step 2 find the root cause of the problem (usually related to one or few of the 6 analysed perspectives) and identify low cost organisational (process) improvements to implement.
The result of Focused Gemba Walk is a list of low cost improvement ideas that could be implemented.

The main aim of the Retrospective Analysis is to find root causes of a problem quickly, without the need for an extensive data collection over a long period (like in statistic-based methods). The Retrospective Analysis consists of three steps:

The outputs of Retrospective Analysis are identified root causes of a problem. After root causes being identified, an organization may undertake actions to eliminate those root causes and in that way eliminate or at least mitigate the problem.

Eco Lean Management Board is one of the practical means for implementing the visual control element of a Lean Management system.
In order to get the best benefits from managements boards the routines of regular reviews should be established. Review routine is a clear standards of structured regular meeting defining who, when, how often and in which way should review the indicators presented on the management board. From that meetings the list of actions should origin, which then in
turn are reviewed during the next regular meeting. In that way a daily accountability process is built in the company, which is one of Lean management system elements.

The aim of introducing Eco Lean Management Boards to the company is to:
- Link daily operation with the most important improvement projects resulting from the company strategy
- Provide enough resources for improvement activities on every level of the organisation
- Embed eco performance into improvement activities
- Build a culture of continuous improvement and leadership discipline.