Abstract Currently the Energy Industry and Industrial Power Plants are committed to support sustainable development balancing environmental, economic, and social benefits. As the first two aspects are fully covered by environmental lifecycle assessment and life cycle costing, the third one is covered only for the portion regarding human health while other aspects, like local employment, contribution to economic development, supplier’s relationship, are not so easy to be measured. Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is considered a powerful tool to measure and improve a company’s sustainability. Yet there is not a unique way of measuring how a company or even a product is impacting on the well-being of the society. In general, S-LCA is seen as an opportunity to improve a company’s reputation, it can help handling social aspects in the lifecycle of a product or service. S-LCA methodology is evolving since 1996 when first attempt to evaluate the social impact of a product rose and many methodologies and databases are now available; at present the phase of S-LCA development is the research of standardization. A use case of S-LCA application to a gas turbine component will be presented comparing the impact of moving the production of one component from Investment Casting to Additive Manufacturing plus insourcing coating execution: proving the benefit of applying S-LCA to products. The findings allow comparing design and manufacturing alternatives to maximize sustainability of a product manufacturing.