A virtual manufacturing approach for designing, programming, testing, verifying and deploying control systems for agile modular manufacturing machinery are proposed in this paper. It introduces the concepts, operations, mechanisms and implementation techniques for integrating simulation environments and distributed control system environments so that the control logic programs that have been programmed and verified in the virtual environment can be seamlessly transferred to the distributed control system environment for controlling the real devices. The approach looks to exploit simulation in a much wider range of applications with great advantages in the design and development of manufacturing machine systems. In particular, it facilitates the verification of the runtime support applications using the simulation model before they are applied to the real system. Mechanisms that allow runtime data to be collected during operation of the real machinery to calibrate the simulation models are also proposed. The system implemented delivers a powerful set of software tools for realising agile modular manufacturing systems.