It's been more than a year since we sent the first order of material for the prototype. From today's perspective, it seems like a very uncertain period. We have decided to build our own lyophilizer with the vision that it will not cost hundreds of thousands but tens of thousands at most. We weren't entirely sure it was possible.
We had an idea, which we tried to project on paper in various ways so that the major obstacle would turn out to be as soon as possible, but it didn't happen. Our ideas of deadlines did fall one by one, but as each one fell, we knew we were getting closer.
Today, I don't know what to think. AMARU is in the testing institute, contract signed and deposit sent, should be ready by the end of April. Will it really be, or will it just miserably perish yet again with another blind ending? I rather believe that despite the possible need for some modifications we will indeed get the certificates in about a month, put a label on the AMARU with a serial number ending "...001" and be done with it.
I say "be done with it", but after all we have been in business for a while now, so it is clear to me that it is just beginning. For now, we're still developers. We will become manufacturers when AMARU 001 comes back from the government testing facility and we send out the first order of material for AMARU 002. Maybe I could go on here to consider how customers will like our creation, how they will accept it and what we will improve on it. But the truth is that all three of us have our heads full of the process at the Brno Testing Institute. Until it is successfully completed, all further considerations are useless, just like our efforts and ideas so far.
This must be how a parent must feel who is raising a child, tinkering with it and overseeing its development when graduation comes. The parent has to hand the child over to strangers who will decide if the child gets one ultimate paper and becomes a "whole person". True, I'm not a parent and I'm too young even to be a parent with a graduating child, but that's kind of how I imagine it. At least in the case of AMARU, we, its creators, can intervene and remove the mistakes.