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Energy Aware Manufacturing (EAM) can be seen as the “Manufacturing paradigm that concentrates on integrated optimal usage of energy in manufacturing right from material procurement to part disposal” (Kumara, 2009). This paradigm has become much stronger in last years with the need of facing new environmental regulations, such as European Union’s Integrated Product Policy (IPP) and the EU’s directive on the Ecodesign of Energy-Using Products (EUPs). They aim at directly regulating the negative contribution to the environment across the entire lifecycle of the product: raw materials supplying, components assembly, product manufacturing, transportation, distribution, marketing, sales, delivery and waste treatment at the end of life. The bottom line is that by recognizing and managing energy as a controllable manufacturing cost, companies directly improve their performance both on the ecological and financial aspects. 

A common perception is that technology or equipment upgrades / replacements are the main sources of energy savings within manufacturing. This perception seems really questionable since another important driver for sustainable energy savings lays in the energy awareness and education of personnel. Following this new idea, an important effort has been recently made in raising awareness of impact of energy use upon business and environment, forcing industry to improve energy efficiency in processes, machines and components. One first step has been to heighten the level of knowledge about energy usage patterns, energy using parameters and energy use optimisation requirements in a complex workshop or factory (see AmI-MoSES FP7 project - http://www.ami-moses.eu).

Nowadays, in most factories, raw materials supplying is still governed by the Just In Time (JIT) paradigm which strives to improve efficiency, service and quality (Lee-Rodd and Ingnold, 1994; McMahon, 1994; Samson and Terziovski, 1999). Although JIT has been a key factor of factory performance in last decades, it concentrates on time and cost performances, rather than on energy performance. Hence there is a need of revisiting JIT under an energy-awareness perspective, aiming at balancing economic and environmental performances.