Intelligent manufacturing is an important way for China to become a powerful manufacturing country, and machine vision technology has become one of the core technologies of intelligent manufacturing system. The main research results and applications of machine vision technology in intelligent manufacturing field in recent years were systematically reviewed by using the method of literature research, and the four major applications such as guidance, inspection, gauging and identification and their research progress of machine vision in intelligent manufacturing field were expounded in detail; the current development situation of global machine vision industry was described and analyzed in detail; the development direction of machine vision technology in intelligent manufacturing industry was predicted. The research results has great significance for the development of intelligent manufacturing infrastructure and machine vision in China.