High pressure homogenization is a well known technique in the chemical-, cosmetics- or pharmaceutical- as well as in the oil- and food industry. Although well established, there is a huge lag of understanding the fundamental processes, which results in a lack of product quality control and needlessly high energy consumption. In the contribution the newly developed simultaneous emulsification and mixing (SEM) technique is presented. Using this technique improves the understanding of the sub-processes in high pressure homogenization like disruption and stabilization. Thus, the process can be optimized in terms of product quality and/or energy efficiency. Examples of new processes are presented resulting in energy savings of up to 90% and new product characteristics.