This editorial introduces the special issue of the Springer journal, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, on intelligent distributed production control. This special issue contains selected papers presented at the 13th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing - INCOM'2009 (Bakhtadze and Dolgui, 2009). The papers in this special issue were selected because of their high quality and their specific way of addressing the variety of issues dealing with intelligent distributed production control. Previous global discussions about the state of the art in intelligent distributed production control are provided, as well as exploratory guidelines for future research in this area.