Abstract-To reduce the manufacturing cost, to increase the productivity and to enhance the manufactured products quality, it is highly important to work in optimal conditions. A very large number of researches has already been dedicated to formulate and to solve the problem of optimizing the different types of manufacturing processes, from different points of view. This paper, unlike the existing approaches, presents a holistic approach of the manufacturing activity optimization problem. The main aspects (financial, industrial, economical, and environmental) of the manufacturing activity were put together by defining three original, synthetic indicators, which can be used as objective functions. Their analytical expressions were found, for exemplification, in the case of a turning process. Numerical simulations, showing the relevance of the indicators and the potential efficiency of their use in practice, are also included.Index Terms-Manufacturing optimization, holistic approach, profit rate (PR), investments efficiency (IE), sustainable profit (SP).