The research area "Virtual Manufacturing (VM)'' is the use of information technology and computer simulation to model real world manufacturing processes for the purpose of analysing and understanding them. As automation technologies such as CAD/CAM have substantially shortened the time required to design products, Virtual Manufacturing will have a similar effect on the manufacturing phase thanks to the modelling, simulation and optimisation of the product and the processes involved in its fabrication. After a description of Virtual Manufacturing (definitions and scope), we present some socio-economic factors of VM and finaly some "hot topics'' for the future are proposed.