The first day of the International Industry Fair was dedicated to industrial automation and optimisation of production processes. The conferences on these two subjects were led by mag. Aljaž Javernik and dr. Robert Ojsteršek from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maribor. In his lecture, dr. Ojsteršek discussed the trends and the significance of optimisation. He presented the optimisation of production systems, the methods that are being used in practice and things to be mindful of. He shared his views on how to put theory into practice and noted: “In production as well as service companies, the key element is our productivity and efficiency.” The speakers impressed a number of listeners with their highly professional lectures.
Concurrently, there was a presentation of incentives within the scope of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, held at the Blue Hall by the company SPIRIT and the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology.
Mag. Gregor Umek, head of the workgroup at the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, first addressed the large crowd of listeners. “At the ministry, we are investing intense work and efforts into supporting the economic development and encouraging enterprises to make the green digital transition. That is why we have prepared this new package of incentives within the scope of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, which we really hope will come to fruition and benefit the economy to the highest extent possible,” he emphasised. He also presented the plan of the Slovenian Industry Strategy by 2030. Later, he explained why it was important to keep up with the rapid technological progress and emergent new innovations: “We are noticing that on the market, old players are fading away and new ones are emerging. The entire organisation in the commercial sense is going through a transformation.” “Essentially, the economy is experiencing one shock after another and is forced to constantly adapt. It must be innovative so that it can retain its competitive advantage,” he added. In his speech he mentioned the historic changes regarding the goals and touched upon what can be expected in the future.
Afterwards, Irena Meterc, head of the Sector for Encouraging Entrepreneurship and Technological Development, presented the current and coming measures within the scope of the Recovery and Resilience plan. She illustrated the measures within the scope of the One-stop shop for the circular economy – transition to sustainable and circular business models for SME and start-up enterprises, support for development and innovation projects – RRI TRL 6-8 and Demo-pilot projects, and support for projects in the field of investments.
Finally, mag. Peter Kobal, director of the company AUDAX d.o.o, had a speech and presented best practices in his own company. AUDAX is active in the field of improvement of processes of product development in the industry. It develops software for medical IT, deals with 3D printing and writes clinical applications. By presenting the company as a best practice example, he demonstrated the efficiency of taking advantage of tenders, which were previously presented in detail by Irena Meterc. “Without this tender, we wouldn’t have a portal today that already has 3185 registered users, and we wouldn’t have artificial intelligence that we can sell successfully together with our ‘on premises’ applications,” he said.
The International Industry fair will take place until Friday, 8 April. In the following days, we will touch upon various topics. Wednesday will be dedicated to welding technology and the best Slovenian welders, including the national welding competition, Thursday will be marked by toolmaking and industrial maintenance, and Friday will be dedicated to the industry of plastic.
