The multi-stage manufacturing system (MMS) is a form of production process organization in modern industry, which refers to a kind of manufacturing system that organizes a variety of production steps, processes, or stages in a certain order to complete the processing of final products. With the increasing requirement for effective management of quality and reliability in manufacturing systems, the research on modeling, evaluating, and optimizing multi-stage manufacturing systems is brought into sharp focus. As one kind of complex system, a multi-stage manufacturing system has a wide range of unit types, performance indexes, and optimization methods, which breed a variety of study paradigms to accommodate different management decisions of MMS. In view of operation risk management, this paper reviews the studies about the unit-reliability model, system performance evaluation, and system performance optimization. In detail, the models covering the main information and physical units of MMS are studied. At the system level, different performance indexes for operation risk evaluation are reviewed, and general optimization activities and methods are also reviewed, such as the optimization for maintenance plan, inspection activities, rework operation, and their joint optimizations. Through these contents, the purpose of this study is to offer a quick review of the study paradigm of MMS, promoting the research and application of complex MMS.