For decades, since the beginning of science fiction in literature, movies or TV shows, we have seen the ways in which people’s homes can be automated. Robots that do household chores or flying cars capable of parking themselves are still in the realm of science fiction as part of everyday household equipment, but many other things are no longer so unattainable, while some of them have become part of everyday life.

I am well aware that this topic is not closely related to Autegra, the pharmacy or the work I do, but it is really interesting as a research topic, especially since I moved in on my own. I haven’t gone beyond smart lights, but I’d like to. The possibilities offered by smart homes are growing every day. Their beginnings can be found in the early years of the 20th century. century.

It wasn’t the true beginning of smart homes as we know them today, but at the time, electric vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, irons, washing machines, toasters and many other household appliances that are commonplace today were a huge step forward at the time. 1975. X10 was created, a communication protocol that sent 120 kHz radio signals through programmable switches. These signals made it possible to control these electrical devices, for example when and how they would work.

Since then, smart homes have gone through many upgrades. Today, they are mainly focused on safety, comfort and a “greener” lifestyle. They provide mobile control, automatic lighting, air temperature control, notification of the owner via text services or e-mail about the situations that are happening or with videos of the house/apartment/yard.

Some of the smart devices often seen in today’s smart homes are:

• Smart TVs – the possibility of an Internet connection where the owner can watch movies, TV shows or music on demand, control by voice or gestures.
• Smart lights – lights that can be automated, controlled remotely or by voice, the ability to detect presence and control the light level depending on the situation. They can also be controlled by taking into account the level of daylight in the room.
• Smart thermostats – controlling the temperature in the room taking into account the conditions outside.
• Smart security cameras – notifying owners even when they are far away.

The possibilities are endless – the lights can wake up the owners by gradually increasing the light level (for example, we have to wake up at 7 o’clock, we can set the lights to gradually increase from 0 to 50% from 6 to 7 o’clock, which simulates the sunrise and is considered a healthy way to wake up ), watering the lawn when needed, heating lunch just before the owner comes home from work, and so on. Considering all that, like everything else in the world, smart homes have their drawbacks. Many people are still skeptical of all technological advances (just look at all the destruction of 5G transmitters current at the time of writing) or fear technology or give up at the first problem they can’t solve. For smart homes to reach their full potential, all smart devices must be fully compatible with each other, regardless of the manufacturing company, model series or time of production. As it stands today, specific protocols or standards do not yet exist. Another concern is data security. All smart homes collect data about our habits and a possible hack into that system makes the owners vulnerable. Turning off the lights or leaving the front door unlocked are just a few ways to leave your home without any security.

The future of smart homes is difficult to predict. Considering the major economic crisis that is inevitable, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the future should still be bright. In some utopian world, our home will be able to schedule appointments based on our commitments, order deliveries of medicine for a disease we don’t yet know we have, but our home knows because it scanned our vital signs in the morning, adjust the shower temperature to our liking. But, in order to reach that level, a lot of time, patience and financial investments are needed.

Today, environmental problems are discussed more than ever before. The industrial branch of the economy is one of the biggest polluters of the Earth’s atmosphere, and as such environmental pollution through industry should be reduced as much as possible. Pollution occurs in various ways – by releasing various unstable organic compounds, gaseous air pollutants or improper disposal of solid harmful waste. All these factors are proven to have a bad effect on the health of people and other living beings, environmental pollution and contamination of air and water suppliers.

Although most pollution has much greater long-term consequences, if several factors coincide, these consequences can be short-term and dangerous. Great smog in London, which happened between 5. and 9. December 1952 he killed, according to some estimates, at least eight, and at most up to twelve thousand people. The smog was created by a combination of very cold windless weather and the use of coal fireplaces by people to heat their homes. Fog created by the weather combined with smog from fireplaces, cars and chimneys. For five full days, a cloud of fog and smog paralyzed London, the entire transport infrastructure was stopped except for the London Underground. Mostly children and the elderly and people with chronic lung diseases died.

This event prompted the British Parliament to transition from coal as the primary fuel to gas, oil and electricity. Similar things are happening today, too large a world population and the needs that go with it are the cause of more and more uncontrolled discharge of industrial waste into the environment, and a transition to clean energy sources is necessary.

The task of producers is to eliminate negative by-products from the industrial sector as much as possible.

Why this is so is quite simple. It is common knowledge how many bad consequences the excessive release of waste into the environment brings. The most dangerous is global warming, which is caused by the excessive release of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and most of these emissions come from industrial production.

Air pollution can be defined as “the introduction of substances or energy, caused directly or indirectly by humans, into the air resulting in harmful effects such as endangering human health, harming living beings and ecosystems and material possessions, and interfering with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment”. The biggest pollutants of the atmosphere today are nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, particulate gases (dust) and heavy metals such as mercury or lead. In addition to the directly responsible industry (especially the coal-fired industry), major pollution is caused by transport, the agricultural sector and waste incineration.

More and more industries are switching their facilities to clean energy sources, and the rest of the companies should follow this example. Plants that use natural gas or coal as fuel contribute to water and air pollution all over the world. These pollutants cause breathing difficulties, neurological problems, and increase the likelihood of heart attacks and cancer, among other chronic health problems. The biggest users of fossil fuels are paper and concrete manufacturers. In the best case, solar energy and wind energy would be used as energy, but the mechanism is still far from that. It would be acceptable to use biomass energy or geothermal energy, which emit some pollutants, but in a significantly smaller amount than natural gas and coal.

Air pollution and climate change are closely related, which has led to international legal regulations. Despite the laws, industries that are not yet switching to cleaner energy sources are successfully circumventing them. According to a 2002 study by Andrew King and Michael Lenox. even 30% of industries underestimate measures to reduce waste. Air pollution in Europe alone is responsible for 400,000 premature deaths per year. Poor implementation of laws and weak enforcement, despite good and strict laws, are the main culprits for European cities leading in air pollution, despite countries in transition such as India and China relying on industry as their main economic sector. It is assumed that by 2030 air pollution will decrease, but then it will slow down exponentially.

The best recent example of the inconsistency of international laws is the Volkswagen scandal of 2015. (“Dieselgate”), where it was discovered, by the US Environmental Protection Agency, that VW deliberately programmed diesel engines to detect when they were in a test environment and thus change performance to better meet emissions (nitrogen oxide) regulations. This has come about because, despite both the US and the EU having demanding standards, the US is more focused on nitrogen oxides, while the EU is more concerned about carbon dioxide. Diesel-powered cars are produced only by European manufacturers, which therefore required “adaptation” for the foreign market. Such cars in a real environment produced up to 40 times higher emissions of nitrogen oxides than is allowed in the USA.

Furthermore, a good case would be the use of technologies that destroy pollutants at their source. Such a step would be a great start for facilities that do not have the ability to switch to “greener” energy sources at the same time. There are different methods for different pollutants and not all mechanisms are equally effective for all pollutants. One of the ways is catalytic oxidation – using very high temperatures and chemical catalysts, pollutants are separated into compounds that can be harmlessly released into the air.

One of the methods that is increasingly used is the use of microorganisms or fungi to clean heavy metals or organic compounds that are difficult to degrade. This mostly applies to developing countries, where water pollution per mass unit is much higher than in developed countries. In addition to the developing countries themselves (India and China, for example again), many developed countries move their production to countries that do not yet have so many legal regulations related to environmental protection. This applies mostly to the mining industry, where waste storage is expensive and pollutants are highly toxic.

Perhaps the most important way to prevent pollution is the development of more effective production planning techniques. The imbalance of supply and demand has a great impact on the environment and its pollution – if a product is produced for which there is little demand, the plant unnecessarily contributes to air pollution. Although political and economic games play a big role in this case, in an ideal world manufacturers around the world would find a way to balance product supply and demand and keep unnecessary factory activities to a minimum and unwanted products out of the supply chain.

It was already mentioned in the text that transport is one of the biggest polluters today. It is generally accepted that a shift to the mass use of electric cars would solve this problem. Electric cars are getting cheaper, the cheapest ones cost around 30,000 US dollars (about 190,000 HRK), with a range of up to 250 kilometers. Although most of these city cars are available to the wider market, there are already those whose ranges go over 800 kilometers, although these models are still out of the price range of most people.

Despite all of the above, Forbes magazine investigated whether electric cars are really more environmentally friendly than cars with internal combustion engines. The biggest problem is the production of batteries, which require a lot of rare metals, the extraction of which causes carbon emissions. One comparative study found that China’s electric car production infrastructure produces up to 60% more CO2 during production than cars with internal combustion engines, although this CO2 emission can be reduced by up to 66% by switching to an American or European style of production. As such, the emissions of the two types of transport are equal or slightly leaning towards electric cars. Despite this, in the long term, electric cars have a huge advantage because they last a long time and, once produced, no longer affect the level of CO2 in the air.

With the advancement of technology, it is to be expected that electric cars will progress and become more efficient and cheaper, considering that more and more people are starting to turn to this type of transport. By turning the economy towards electric cars, the production infrastructure, more efficient production techniques, recycling options will also progress and the need for material mining will be reduced.

The world is already used to production as it is, and the economic profit since the first industrial revolution is too great for manufacturers to take risks and dare to introduce critical changes in order not to lose that profit. However, reducing pollution would also reduce the pressure on the health care system and reduce sick leave and poor productivity. Estimates from the World Economic Forum say the world could lose 3.8 billion working days a year by 2060. if the trend continues at this pace.

The consequences of economic losses are already visible today. The global economy is losing 225 billion dollars a year due to lost working days. In addition, traffic jams often interfere with daily operations, while poor air quality affects the performance and motivation of employees, even if the work is done in the office. A growing problem is the impossibility of finding labor in cities that are polluted above average.

All in all, manufacturers should take air pollution more and more seriously. If not for the rest of the world, then for yourself.

Yokogawa Hungary and Croatia, a leading provider of solutions for industrial automation and instrumentation for the process and manufacturing industry, has announced a “Channel Partner” program agreement with us, Autegro.

Saša Šteković, CEO of Autegra, said: “With the Channel Partner Program agreement with Yokogawa, Autegra emphasizes its leadership in industrial solutions for process management systems in Croatia and maintains the highest value for our clients and employees. Thanks to this cooperation, Autegra looks forward to being able to lead many future projects in Croatia for many years to come, and to discover how Yokogawa and Autegra can cooperate in different areas.”

“Yokogawa is excited about the agreement with Autegra,” said Bálint, István, Yokogawa’s manager for Hungary and Croatia. “Autegra and Yokogawa’s collaboration offers significantly improved market reach for solutions and services, which will benefit existing and future customers.”

Read more information about the Channel Partner Program at:

www.yokogawa.com/eu/support/channel-partner-program/

Additive technologies, known as 3D printing, have been around since the late 20th century. century. Namely, the roots of 3D printing were laid by Mr. Charles Hull in 1984. with the invention of a machine for printing objects from CAD files. The machine consisted of four main elements: a tank full of liquid plastic (photopolymer), a platform that lowered into the tank, a UV laser and a computer that controlled the laser and the platform. The process took place in several steps. The first step was to expose a thin layer of photopolymer above the platform, where it would immediately crystallize upon contact with the UV laser. After the first layer was finished, the platform would lower down to reveal a new layer of liquid plastic, upon which the laser would recrystallize the object to be printed and the two parts would be instantly joined.

In those beginnings, 3D printing the simplest objects took a long time. Small rooms operated by small machines would usually be completed between six and twelve hours, depending on the size of the room and the machine. Larger rooms, several meters in size, would take days to produce.

Although 3D printing has been used for a long time, it has only recently become widely available. Various factors have contributed to this – the possibility of using different types of materials, the cheaper cost of printing and the exponential growth of technological advances.

In its beginnings, 3D printing was used to create plastic figurines or prototypes of various products or ideas. Technological progress today makes it possible to create life-sized prostheses, models or electronic products. Considering all this, the greatest potential of 3D printing lies precisely in industry, especially in the medical field.

The term additive technology or additive manufacturing was defined in 2009. as the term under which the ASTM International Committee operates. Several types of additive technologies are used today. As already mentioned, stereolithography is the first process of additive manufacturing of objects layer by layer. Deposition Melting (FDM) is commonly known as 3D printing. The object is created by passing the polymer material through a nozzle where it is heated and layer by layer is laid on the work surface according to the created pattern.

This technology is used in over 40% of devices currently in use. The production of objects by lamination makes the product so that the laser, layer by layer, cuts the laminated material placed on the previously cut layer. Selective laser melting, SLM, is used to make high-density elements. The powder material, with the help of a laser, was brought to the melting point and “glued” to the previous layer. Electron beam melting (EMB) is a method of building an object layer by layer by melting a layer of metal powder with an electron beam.

Additive technologies can be divided into rapid prototyping and rapid tooling, and rapid production that connects the production of prototypes and tools in the production of final products in smaller batches. Rapid prototyping is the name for a set of technologies that allow engineers to create a physical model of a product under development directly from a CAD project, computer-aided design, model without the need for additional work operations. The developed model is fully functional regardless of the complexity of the designed model.

This type of prototyping enables a faster development cycle, the ability to present an unfinished product to potential customers and implement their observations and comments. Rapid tooling is used during production design. In the mass production of products, it is necessary to design tools, such as molds for pressing, casting, injection molding and similar production processes. Tools are made using additive technologies to optimize production and identify and eliminate defects. In addition to the speed of making such tools, they are also significantly cheaper, which reduces costs before production.

According to estimates, the value of additive manufacturing in 2019 in 2010 it was over 9 billion dollars, which is an insignificant part compared to the entire industry, but there is a visible change in the trend in the increasingly changing business environment and the development of new products. Several additive manufacturing and additive manufacturing startup companies have already reached a market value of over $1 billion, and more and more manufacturers of traditional processing equipment are expanding their additive manufacturing lineup. A new branch of industry has also been developed, which deals with the production of materials, powders, liquids, foils that are used in the process of additive manufacturing.

Modern devices have the ability to create very large objects. One of the largest commercial devices that has the ability to work with multiple materials, a combination of plastic, metal and ceramics, at the same time has a working surface of 2000 x 800 x 600 centimeters and a maximum object weight of 250 kilograms. The largest product that has been made is a ship made at the College of Marine Engineering in the United States of America. The painted ship is 7.6 meters long and weighs 2,200 kilograms, and it took 72 hours to paint. The device used to print the ship is used only for research, and has the ability to print workpieces up to 30 meters long, 6.5 meters wide and 3 meters high with a maximum printing amount of 200 kilograms of material per hour.

In general industry, 3D printing has increasing possibilities as today 3D printers work with materials such as titanium, steel, aluminum, iron and copper, and as such represent a major advance in the automotive and aerospace industries. Industries can focus more on the functions of their products because thinking about how the product will fit out of focus can go out of focus. As a result, production is accelerated, production costs are reduced and less waste material is generated (40 to 70 percent) compared to traditional manufacturing methods. For example, the production of one robotic arm using the classic manufacturing method costs US$10,000 and takes an average of 4 weeks. 3D printing produces $600 in 24 hours. Airbus announced that over 1,000 3D printed parts are used in the production of the A350,

In the field of medicine, 3D printing is important for several key reasons. The first reason is the ability to have custom medical devices that are not overpriced. 3D printers can quickly and easily print stents, bandages and even surgical components, virtually at the moment they are needed, ensuring that a medical facility is never without essential supplies. As stated at the beginning of the text, it is possible to create individualized medical items intended for a specific patient. A strong penetration of additive technologies occurs in dentistry, where printers are intensively used in the production of temporary veneers, permanent implants and prostheses.

As of this writing, COVID-19 is still keeping the world on PAUSE. A big problem is the lack of ventilators in hospitals that are overwhelmed with patients, but they are solving this problem by 3D printing ventilator parts. Great engagement, during the pandemic, was shown by various companies and enthusiasts who made their 3D printer capacities available. An example of this is the Pitlane Project where Formula 1 teams teamed up to make respirator parts and the OPEN WORKS COVID-19 project where enthusiasts organized and started making protective visors for medical diatonics, and the project spread around the world.

Prosthetic works are also made faster, simpler and cheaper. Comparison with classic prostheses is almost useless – apart from the mentioned advantages, 3D prostheses can be bionic (prostheses designed by biological engineering methods that are driven by muscles and nerve stimulation) and can be adjusted in size and weight.

Beyond applications in these narrow areas, 3D printing has the potential to change the world we live in on a much wider spectrum. It can be used as a major tool in the global fight against hunger and homelessness. There are already 3D food printers in the world. They would write customized, nutrient-dense foods synthesized in layers from containers of powder and oil purchased at a local grocery store. Such food containers would be easily portable, have a much longer shelf life than conventional foods, and could be made from materials such as protein insects. Recently, a vegetarian vegetable steak with the texture of meat was successfully printed for the first time. The possibilities of using this technology are enormous, from making food with a certain taste to special food that does not contain certain allergens or contains drugs for easier intake.

This would enable space exploration. For example, long-duration space travel takes more than fifteen years. Food that would be in powdered form, meaning that the moisture had been extracted from it, could be stored for more than thirty years, enabling manned interplanetary travel.

In addition to food, there is the possibility of building homes cheaper. There are already 3D printers in China that use 100% of the industrial waste they are given and build houses with that material instead of cement. Such residences are energy efficient, can withstand earthquakes up to magnitude 9 on the Richter scale, and are built with less waste and environmental pollution.

With the advancement of 3D printers and related technology, it is inevitable to wonder what else awaits us in this regard. One possibility is the printing of fully functional organs. Although it sounds like science fiction, technology has already reached the ability to print various types of organic tissue. Various clinical trials are already in an advanced stage. 2019. In 2010, a team of Israeli scientists successfully printed a functional heart specimen the size of a raspberry, with all veins, cells and cells, made of biological material, and an Australian team printed a fully functional ear implant, which was implanted in a patient using stem cells and cartilage cells.

Manufacturers began to use additive technologies in the production of footwear and clothing. One such example is the company Feetz, which produces sneakers completely manufactured using additive technologies. The company uses additive technology to provide the customer with the overall experience of designing a personalized sneaker. First, using a mobile app, the user scans their feet in 3D, to create a CAD model for the sneakers. By using printers that support multiple materials, it is possible to create multi-colored sneakers. In some footwear models, Adidas already uses parts produced by additive technologies, such as the soles of sneakers. Recently, many startup manufacturers have appeared with the desire to produce clothes made by 3D printing.

Although the development of this type of technology seems like an inevitable direction that human society should go, there are problems. The problems are, of course, of an economic nature. The biggest problem will be the protection of intellectual property. With the development of 3D scanning technology, it is becoming easier to perform a very precise scan of desired elements, using readily available devices, which can be used to reverse engineer products. Many companies that have designed certain products that they produce may find themselves in trouble because their trademark will become available to everyone and additionally, much cheaper. One solution is to sell printable CAD files to customers instead of physical products. Although it is still a long way off, the big manufacturers should already start thinking about ways to overcome this problem or face the consequences.

With the spread of popularity and availability of 3D printers, in addition to the benefits for society and education, a serious problem of 3D printed weapons has emerged. CAD and STL open source files of fully functional weapons are readily available on various websites, which are no problem to create using cheap hobbyist 3D printers. The documentation required for printing the most popular model of a functional weapon has been downloaded over 100,000 times. Weapons makers have long used additive manufacturing technologies, mostly to produce tanks and armor, but some have already successfully used devices that can fabricate alloy parts to make weapons control mechanisms. This topic is still not equally regulated by law, and in most countries it is not even regulated.

3D printing is already making a huge difference in the world as we know it, and right now we are not even aware of it. Some of the tech giants are already studying the market like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, IBM and Amazon, and we are aware of how much these companies have changed our lives in the last 10 years. The next step in the use of additive technology is the production of 3D printed electronic elements to speed up and facilitate the production of printed circuits that are now found in a large number of consumer products. Progress is also being made in the area of ​​amateur printers, where efforts are being made to develop the most popular FDM printers with the ability to test metal products.

The development of new materials, such as biomaterials, various alloys and polymer materials, is exciting, which will enable the production of much more complex products. The future of the industry is moving towards hybrid production, which will enable combining and complementing additive and traditional production technologies. In connection with the development of industrial production, highly specialized software solutions are being developed that facilitate and improve the development of new products.

When 3D printing in its full power becomes available to the masses, the next question arises – how will it affect innovation and the overall further development of civilization?

Traces of pharmaceuticals can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century. century. At the end of the 19 century, when pharmaceutical processes were manual and it took several people to produce one bottle of medicine. Today the situation is somewhat different, ubiquitous automation has also entered the field of pharmacy, where robots and artificial intelligence systems perform 40-50 production jobs that include packaging, sorting and many other operations.

The advantages of automation in the pharmaceutical industry are numerous – production speeds up, the space for human error is reduced, the volume and mass ratios of the elements in medicines are more precise than ever before, the packaging is more precise… However, despite all these positive aspects, many pharmaceutical companies are delaying the transition to automatic production method for one obvious reason – one production error can destroy a production batch that may contain millions and millions of tablets or vials of medicine.

If the fault is detected, there will be huge economic losses where one batch of production can cost millions and millions of dollars, euros, pounds, choose your currency. If the error is not detected in time, even worse consequences are possible where faulty drugs are placed in the healthcare system, which can pose a potential risk to consumers.

However, the pharmaceutical industry has become increasingly focused on revenue in recent years, and revenue generated by hand cannot match that provided by an automated system. More and more pharmaceutical factories are switching to automatic production systems to offset and reduce production costs, while the risk from the previous paragraph increases. Today’s automatic systems are much more stable, more precise, alarms and warnings report any production error that can be corrected immediately, and are much more reliable.

In addition, automation provides great relief in logistics and administrative tasks. The delivery of medicines today is much easier due to automatic production batch records, logistical errors can be much more easily spotted and corrected, allowing medicines to reach the people who need them most quickly.

However, automation in this industry will never be able to completely replace humans, but in the future it will be needed more than ever. The reason is simple – the beginning of the production of personalized medicines. Today, all people with the same diagnosis are still given the same drugs regardless of differences in genetics, age, sex, level of disease, etc. Personalized medicine has not yet reached its full potential, which will be automatically enabled by systems for analyzing millions of individual genomes, medical records, family diseases, researching a specific type of disease in a short time and will enable. This method of treatment could bring the biggest breakthrough in the treatment of rare diseases where a personalized approach is more important than in some everyday diseases.

Pharmacy automation has a bright future, but still many companies have not decided on their introduction. Their concerns are usually cost of implementation, complexity of use and staff acceptance. However, such systems are cheaper and more available over time and are easier to use, which makes them more attractive to all pharmaceutical companies, regardless of their size.

What were we?
Autegra Ltd. started working on January 1, 2015. with headquarters in Garešnica and one employee who had his own vision of work, relationship with future employees and clients and the desire to create a young and ambitious team that will not be afraid of the challenges that will be found on the way. The vision included a modern working regime (flexible working hours, working from home, team buildings, relaxed meetings…), creating a company with strong know-how in the field of process automation and generally working in industrial automation as such.

The very beginning was based on a partnership with a company in the field of pharmacy, with which the working relationship is stable even today, but over time the partnerships began to expand and the number of customers, partners and projects grew, which caused the need to increase the number of employees, which continues even today.

What are we?
Autegra Ltd. currently employs 7 people, with a tendency to grow and increase the number of employees. We cooperate with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) where, in coordination with the mentors of final and graduate theses, we assign practical tasks from real projects with the aim of extending cooperation with students in the form of an employment relationship.

We are currently performing tasks in automation in Croatia and in Europe, with the possibility of expanding to other continents. The scope of work remained the same, with a focus on pharmacy and biochemistry, but with an aspiration towards expansion to other branches of the process industry, as well as to factory automation, i.e. machine automation. In the moments when it is not working, not cooperating with other companies and not expanding, various team buildings, dinners and get-togethers are organized. Teambuildings have so far consisted of an active part (roomescape, karting…) and a passive part (dinner).

What do we want to become?
Autegra doo operates with the goal of becoming a leading company for process automation in the field of pharmacy and biochemistry. We are trying to expand in terms of the number of employees and the number of projects we are working on.

The short-term goal is primarily the opening of a branch in Zagreb and increased independent work on the hardware part of the project.

The long-term goals are the expansion of the company and a sufficient number of employees with knowledge and experience to take on projects independently, equipping the office in accordance with the modern way of doing work and, as always, the effort to ensure that employees are satisfied with the work they do, in financial, social and psychological aspects. .