This paper discusses a new approach to the development of industrial manufacturing control systems. In industry, there is an increasing need for more intelligent and agile control systems which are able to be flexible in their operations. Through use of the new IEC 61499 standard, a new design methodology for modeling industrial control systems has been developed with these goals in mind. A design pattern for the control of automation devices has been created and tested. In addition, a distributed intelligent automation system has been developed in which different devices are able to interact, communicate and adjust to their respective environments. In order to view and test the developed system, a web based Human-Machine Interface (HMI) has been created. This HMI is able to be run on any internet enabled device, including Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones. Through this HMI the workflow of the system can be viewed and modified.