The last of such a workshop on VSS in the 20th Century, the theme of this workshop is Intelligent Systems with Variable Structure, which aims to summarize the state-of-the-art in VSS as well as to revamp VSS into a forward-looking research field in the 21 st Century. The emerging trend of cross-fertilization and integration of VSS with other control and non-control areas such as robust control, adaptive control, nonlinear control, identification, modelling, optimization, artificial intelligence, neural networks, and fuzzy logic, etc. will continue and flourish in the new century.