In the 21st century, manufacturing processes and equipment will be changing frequently to take advantage of new technologies, and to adapt to new products and varying market requirements. Next generation Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) will consist of distributed control and application entities that dynamically collaborate to satisfy both local and global objectives. Manufacturing control systems will be required to manage production change and disturbances effectively and efficiently both at higher level of product control and at the lower levels of soft and hard real time control. The research described in this paper focuses on agent-based metamorphic control architecture and function-block-based design of control agents for distributed manufacturing environments at the soft and hard levels. The initial implementation of an intelligent control agent designer and the process of automatic control code generation are described.