IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) is the authority that publishes different standards in the fields of electrical and electronics engineering, to be used internationally. In the area of manufacturing, it has demanded a new standard to fulfil better solutions of dynamic requirements. The IEC 61499 redacted by IEC offers interoperability, portability, configurability and distributed control applications for manufacturing processes. However, this standard is not a replacement of IEC 61131-3, one of the most used standards in industry; instead, it is a complement of it. The basic software units of IEC 61499 are named Function Blocks (FBs), which can be described as blocks that encapsulate functionality. By combining FBs together, it is possible to solve complex problems. The objective of this project (in close cooperation with another project) is to develop a software environment in Java language. It follows the requirements of IEC 61499, and implement a Function Block designer and a runtime execution environment, as a part of an existing Wise-ShopFloor framework. The scope of this project covers: FB algorithm editor: Each FB has one or more algorithms, which can be defined in the algorithm editor using IEC 61131-3 or Java. FB serialization: Opening and saving the configuration of FBs in Java Class file is one of the tasks of this project. As soon as the configuration is saved, the Java code of FB can be generated. Java code is generated because compiled Java allows execution of FB. Saving in Java Class file permits portability, i.e. the saved configuration can be opened in any JVM system, and vice versa. Case study: A simulation of an assembly station using an ABB IRB 140 robot is studied and implemented using the runtime simulator of the Java platform, in which some basic FBs have been also created in a library. This project also includes: (1) implementation of user interface and (2) FB serialization in XML. It is anticipated that the developed environment will be able to save and open FBs configurations either in XML or in Java Class, following the specification of IEC 61499. It will allow portability and reusability. Because of the portability, the so-designed FBs can be validated using another FB environment such as FBDK (Function Block Development Kit).