The research work focuses on improving reliability and reducing waste in investment casting manufacturing. The key enabler for this purpose would be a holistic approach, to consider the system in its entirety. This is accomplished by analyzing the product and the manufacturing procedure from the beginning to the end. Specifically, the proposed methods include data-driven techniques and decision-making, to correlate different aspects of the manufacturing process and apply diagnostic methods to identify causes of defects. The reliability improvement is strongly associated with waste reduction in manufacturing. Since environmental sustainability and utilization of resources have become increasingly important to manufacturers in recent years, having a reliable process with reduced waste is a key factor for the optimization of the production process.