Development of future industry has become an active research area in the recent years. A structured national workgroup, called IMS², has emerged in France over the last decade. The aim of this paper is, regarding four highlighted general research topics (namely agility, new technologies, sustainability and industrial dissemination), to synthetize the general research works on intelligent manufacturing and to demonstrate the principal contributions developed within the framework of this national workgroup. After a critical evaluation of the proposed approaches towards alternative solutions, this paper suggests a 2030 roadmap for the workgroup.