The type of tools for sustainability assessment is manifold and is growing consistently to meet more and more of society's needs. This paper presents a review and evaluation study of existing assessment tools collected from a variety of sources. The aim is to clarify the difference between those sustainability assessments tools and increase factory planner's awareness towards the different tool properties. In this work representative assessment tools are evaluated and described with respect to their specific focus and benefits as well as drawbacks. Based on that a research gap is identified and further research directions can be derived

The energy consumption behavior of installed machine tools and manufacturing systems are nowadays well evaluated and the field of action for comprehensive improvements and optimization activities is open. Despite the possible improvement potential of installed machine tools, its implementation is limited due to constrains such as high investment costs with unknown amortisation time for the machine tool reconfiguration. The planned configuration of components tailored to the machine tool's target use is seen as a promising way to address the expected energetic performance in the configuration phase using detailed multichannel measurements and knowledge of past improvement activities.A modular configuration approach, based on multichannel measurements, in order to improve the energy efficiency of the machine tool, including all auxiliaries, is not present yet. In conjunction with a case study, this paper introduces a concept for a machine tool configurator to integrate the requirements for the energy use during the use phase of the machine tool and its components. Beyond this, the paper provides information for TCO calculations and investment decision.The integrated approach enables machine tool builders to optimize the machine tool configuration, select components in order to increase energy efficiency and achieve cost savings for the machine tool user, in line and validated with the machine tool builder's business case