In this study, the relationship between manufacturing plant areas and the plant's overhead energy was investigated and analyzed. The physical information about five industrial facilities, which included blueprints, plant layout, plant area, and machine configuration, was collected and in-plant measurements were made. The goal of this research is to measure, in actual manufacturing plants, the area distributions and their relationship to the basic machine area footprint (where the product manufacturing occurs) across a wide range of machine types. A six-categorization system (A to F) was developed for the different plant areas and can be used easily by other researchers. A linear relationship of decreasing total plant area (A to F) with decreasing machine size (A) was found. Thus, the allocated total plant area (TPA) is determined as A to F and can be estimated for a single machine operating at a manufacturing rate of x products or workpieces per hour. The nonprocess energy, then, is TPAx (30 W/m(2) or 3.6 kJ/hm(2)) for manufacturing building nonprocess energy intensity. Then, total nonprocess energy for the manufacturing machine (kJ/h) divided by the production rate x products/h gives the nonprocess energy per product (kJ/product). This research has contributed further to the life cycle of products by estimating the nonprocess energy per product, which then can be added to the direct process manufacturing energy to give a total energy per product.