Introduction

Abstract

The Fourth International Workshop on Product Family Engineering, PFE-4 was held in Bilbao, Spain, October 3–5, 2001. This workshop is the fourth in a series, with different names, but with the same target group. These workshops have a focus on software product-family engineering, and are held each 11/2 year since 1996. The names used until now are Development and Evolution of Software Architectures of Product Families (Springer LNCS 1429), and Software Architectures for Product families (IW-SAPF3, Springer LNCS 1951). The workshops provide a large amount of time for discussion, which helps to interchange ideas in the field. The first workshops mainly dealt with architecture and platform issues. Over time other software engineering issues were included as subject of the workshop. All workshops were organised within co-operation projects of European Industry, viz. ARES (Esprit IV 20.477) 1995–1999, ESAPS (ITEA 99005) 1999–2001 and CAFÉ (ITEA ip00004) 2001–2003.