TechBlick 10 - Dejan [EN]

So my name is Jos and I’m working on research in circular economy and automotive sector. And I would like to know your point of view. If you accept, I’m going to record our conversation, transcribe it and put the transcription with the pseudonym, not your real name, in a repository of text documents that will be used for the research. If you do this and you change your mind and no longer want to participate, get in touch with us and we will immediately remove your interview from the repository. I’m leaving you information sheet with contact informations after the interview. So if you accept, please tell me your name and that you accept it.

My name is Dejan Miletic and I accept you have my consent.

Thank you very much. So the first question, can you tell me a bit about your educational and professional background and interests?

Educational background? I’m a mechanical engineer and I hold MBA degree, so two degrees and vocational. I’m a business development director in 3D metrology.

And what is your area of expertise?

It’s a 3D metrology and laser.

The theme of this conference is The future of Electronics Reshaped. What does the idea of reshaping electronics for the future mean to you?

It means to make it electronic. Bring electronics to people. Cheap. Reliable. Simple. Sustainable. Recyclable, preferably. Yeah, these are the main topics.

What do you think is the relationship between electronics and sustainability?

Well, it’s a very good question. I need a moment to think about that. Sustainability and electronics. Well I’ll just from the top of my head first thing electronics can help us to make things more sustainable. You follow up, you see everything. It can help us to basically sort out the trash. At the same time, electronics electronic is creating a trash, so it’s a blessing and curse in one. Yeah, it’s a tricky question.

Yeah. Can you define a circular economy in your own words?

Today I heard very nice thing about that. And I think I had a cloud of ideas and this is what I saw. The slide put pretty much in a shape very nice. They’re kind of four levels. First one is you try to upgrade existing product, then add a software hardware feature whatsoever. Then you try to disassemble existing product, try to use components after that, and eventually you have to recycle the product. So I think this this slide really brings spot on. Yeah.

Do you participate in circular economy yourself in any aspect of your life?

Privately for sure. Definitely. You know, we I’m living in Germany, so we are putting out our trash in different bins. That’s one thing. We’re talking about a company as well. We develop the sensors with which can capture different materials from a pile of trash. So and I think it’s also good for karma. Yeah, that would be short answer, both privately and professionally. I try to contribute a little bit.

Yeah. Do you think electronics can play a role in making the car industry more sustainable?

Oh yeah, for sure. The question is what? We shall see. The big picture. We should see the detail. If you see the big picture, it’s like the way how we use the cars. The concept of using car, not one guy, one car which sitting for 90 plus percent of the time unused. That will be one way second way use the smart streets. Electronics can use can create the green wave. We’re talking about traffic lights, for instance. We can use the smart cars in terms of, you know, it drops me off here and the car goes somewhere, be reused. Or if you’re talking about a vehicle itself we saw today, nice concept to reduce the number of cables being used there or the number of microcontrollers. So you have one micro one controller instead of tons of micro control. So there are a lot of rooms for for improvement for sure. Yeah.

The second part of this question is can the automotive industry or car industry play a role making it more circular, more circular economy.

I would go back to my answer about that, and I think it reflects pretty well the possibilities we’ve got there. Of course, car industry is not a simple industry. There are a lot of requirements, legal requirements, whatever to to follow up. So it makes everything a little bit more complicated. Eventually liability who is going to be responsible for some product amend? Theoretically, yes. Practically. There is a long way to go ahead, but we have to start at some point. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Do you think the car industry can promote circular economy or do they do it already? What do you think.

They’re doing already? Something. The question is if they really, truly believe in that and how to motivate them to do even more. So I wish they can they could do a little bit more there. Yeah, there is still a lot of room for improvement.