Open Manufacturing Equipment is mandatory to answer the demand of modern manufacturing for distributed monitoring or automation, and to allow fast system reconfiguration. This project is inspired by the reference models defined by the ISO/OSI Manufacturing Message Specification for remote machine tool supervision (MMS) and the Open System Architecture within Control Applications (OSACA). Instead of proposing MMS or OSACA protocols for communication, we propose a unified object-oriented solution based on the OMG-CORBA software bus. Adopting a common object-oriented approach for both remote communication and internal architecture of a NC platform is conceivable. It leads to a design very close to the one proposed in the mentioned standards. The consequences of including a Manufacturing Object Messaging System on the NC design model are discussed. A Java- and CORBA-based demonstration prototype has been developed. Finally, the paper describes how we address real-time constraints on communications.