The paper will provide an overview of the main scope, objectives and future actions of the worldwide IMS Network of Excellence (NoE). The main aim of the IMS-NoE is to create the proper environment to group academic and industrial communities for developing co-operation links, for co-ordinating current and future research, for facilitating knowledge transfer and dissemination of project results and for assessing the technological development and expertise in Europe in the key areas of design, engineering and control of manufacturing systems in the extended enterprise.