Increasing requirements for energy and resource efficiency are driving alloy material manufacturers to continuous improvement measures. A very effective way to improve processes without major reconstruction work is to adapt the process management. In this regards, plant service life, throughput, product quality and energy- as well as resource efficiency have to be balanced. This is extremely challenging since fluctuations in the chemical composition of the feeding material place high demands on process control and -monitoring. Due to the heterogeneity of the sample materials and the associated homogenization, optimization approaches are subject to narrow limitations. Within the homogenization, the crushing, grinding, possibly demetallization and pressing / melting / acid digestion of the sample requires between 6 and 30 minutes. Facing that long analysis times, close monitoring of raw- and input materials are subject to narrow, operational limits. Possible fluctuations with a negative influence cannot be identified reliably. On the other hand in the case of process samples, the long analysis times lead either to waiting times and thus to energy losses. In cases where the extraction process progresses, it leads to a post-mortem process evaluation and correspondingly more unstable, less efficient processes. These unstable smelters struggle with lower plant uptime, quality issues, higher reject rates, and many other drawbacks. As in many industries before, lasers can open up entirely new possibilities. Laser-based optical emission spectroscopy (laser OES) can generate many thousands of measurements in just a few seconds. This amount of data can then be homogenized digitally. Physical homogenization of the sample is no longer necessary. This is not only fast but also smart in the sense of Industry 4.0.