With the increased availability of web based market portals, both C2B and B2B,manufacturing sectors have felt the increased demands of customer needs. Soon the manufacturers who are most successful will be those who are able to efficiently utilize the flow of data to make purchasing,production and shipping decisions. The J2EE APIs provide the means for building manufacturing systems that allow information to flow throughout the organization, from the factory floor to the corporate boardroom. We will present a vision and some potential system architectures for manufacturing systems which can be implemented with currently existing Java Technologies and XML to allow manufacturers to successfully meet the challenges of the eCommerce revolution. As manufacturing and process equipment becomes smarter and the complexities of the manufacturing process increase, programmers and software vendors will be pressured by the manufacturers to produce COTS ( Customizable Off The Shelf) software components. A discussion of how JINI, the J2EE APIs, and XML technologies can be used to fill gaps in current manufacturing software will be presented, with the aim of inspiring developers with a wide range of potential markets.