Nowadays enterprises are driven by a market demand characterized by fierce competition, rapid pace of business and continually compressed time schedules. On the one hand, manufacturing is experiencing shortened production cycles and reduced batch sizes; on the other hand, the variety of product types and their customization are increasing, as well as customer demands rapidly change. Hence, to maintain and improve their competitive advantage, leading organizations in different industrial sectors need to improve process optimization and efficiency. One initiative that a company may undertake is the implementation of lean manufacturing practices: this term has been introduced by Womack et al. [1] to describe the working philosophy deployed in Japanese companies, with particular concern for Toyota. This methodology relies on the elimination of wastes and non-productive processes, in order to focus on value added operations and produce high-quality products, at the customers demand pace, with ideally no waste. Another approach is the deployment of automation and Information Technology (IT) tools, which allow to improve process planning and control, as well as to enhance the performance of each step of the manufacturing process. The landscape of software classes and their purposes has been changing over the years, and is still evolving at a high pace. Today, the focus is on the integration and the communication between different information tools and among systems deployed by different companies (for example, among firms belonging to the same supply chain).