Abstract: The nonferrous metallurgical (NFM) industry is a cornerstone industry for a nation’s economy. With the development of artificial technologies and high requirements on environment protection, product quality, and production efficiency, the importance of applying smart manufacturing technologies to comprehensively percept production states and intelligently optimize process operations is becoming widely recognized by the industry. As a brief summary of the smart and optimal manufacturing of the NFM industry, this paper first reviews the research progress on some key facets of the operational optimization of NFM processes, including production and management, blending optimization, modeling, process monitoring, optimization, and control. Then, it illustrates the perspectives of smart and optimal manufacturing of the NFM industry. Finally, it discusses the major research directions and challenges of smart and optimal manufacturing for the NFM industry. This paper will lay a foundation for the realization of smart and optimal manufacturing in nonferrous metallurgy in the future.