Smart manufacturing (SM) considered as a new trend of modern manufacturing helps to meet objectives associated with the productivity, quality, cost and competiveness. It is characterized by decentralized, distributed, networked compositions of autonomous systems. The model of SM is inherited from the organization of the living systems in biology and nature such as ant colony, school of fish, bee's foraging behaviors, and so on. In which, the resources of the manufacturing system are considered as biological organisms, which are autonomous entities so that the manufacturing system has the advanced characteristics inspired from biology such as self-adaptation, self-diagnosis, and self-healing. To prove this concept, a cloud machining system is considered as research object in which internet of things and cloud computing are used to integrate, organize and allocate the machining resources. Artificial life tools are used for cooperation among autonomous elements in the cloud machining system.