Abstract. The article presents an application of a fuzzy expert system for renovating a metal cutting process to cope with the sustainability requirements. The work seeks a sustainable balance between energy consumption, productivity and tool damage. Cylindrical grooving experiments were performed to generate data related to quantification of the effects of material hardness, cutting speed, width of cut and feed rate on the aforementioned sustainability measures. A fuzzy knowledge-base was developed that suggests the most suitable adjustments of the controlled variables that would lead to achievement of various combinations of the objectives.