ECPPM 2002 took place in Portorož, Slovenia, between September 8 and 11, 2002.

The conference was opened by the minister of information society of Slovenia, dr. Pavel Gantar.

130 delegates from all continents took part and presented nearaly all of the 117 papers published in the proceedings. This selectiopn was made based on over 170 extended abstracts that were submitted.

The modeling and structuring of product and process information is essential for efficient IT support. It is an enabling factor of integration, automation and business process re-engineering in the construction industry. The conference confirmed the belief that the technology is mature. More effort is needed in education and advocacy of product model based approaches.

The virtual enterprises and construction e-business are a reality. Product model standards have been industrially applied and tested. The conceptualisation of the domain is re-approached through the definitions of appropriate ontologies, that offer themselves as a base for everything else. New methods for handling process information are investigated. Technology push is coming from the areas of mobile computing, Web services and the semantic Web. Collaboration is focusing on the human working with other humans and taking into the account the whole spectrum of his personality. The awareness that data, no matter how well put in formation, needs a knowledgeable person to make sense of it, is getting stronger, leading to new approaches in knowledge management and the education.

ECPPM has been always tightly connected with the European research projects. During the ECPPM the review of the ProdAEC project took place as well as the final workshop of the ISTforCE project.

The plenary papers as well as the panel discussions reflected back at the 5th framework and charted the way forward into the 6th and beyond.

In a close vote of the EAPPM steering committee, Istanbul was selected as the host of the ECPPM 2004.

Some links:

• participant list,
• papers published,
• getting just the proceedings,
• photos from the conference,
• product and process modelling jokes,
• other ECPPM conferences,
• the home page as it was just before the conference.