The MAESTRI project aims to advance the sustainability of European manufacturing and process industries. This is done by providing a management system in the form of a flexible and scalable platform, and to guide and simplify the implementation of an innovative approach, the Total Efficiency Framework. The overall aim of this framework is to encourage a culture of improvement within process industries by assisting the decision-making process, supporting the development of improvement strategies and helping define the priorities to improve the company's environmental and economic performance. Its development and validation will be achieved through application in four real industrial settings across a variety of activity sectors. The Total Efficiency Framework will be based on four main pillars to overcome the current barriers and promote sustainable improvements: a) an effective management system targeted at process and continuous improvement; b) efficiency assessment tools to define improvement and optimisation strategies and support decision-making processes; c) integration with a toolkit for Industrial Symbiosis focusing on material and energy exchange; d) a software Platform, based on the Internet of Things (IoT), to simplify the concept implementation and ensure an integrated control of improvement process. Over a period of 4 years, the project will deliver exploitable resultsclustered into technological outputs (including eco-innovative products, processes and services tailored to industrial end-users) and structured solutions (involving technical, economical, legislative and policy solutions synergistically combined).