Recently, a good friend of mine who knows that at Haas Schleifmaschinen we develop machines for the production of medical implants told me about an extraordinary athlete: the South African runner Oscar Pistorius. The athlete with the two lower‑leg prostheses who wanted to compete at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

After this remarkable sportsman was denied the opportunity to compete at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the debate was reignited. To be honest, I still find this decision difficult to understand. To me, Oscar Pistorius is a symbol of willpower, discipline and courage and a role model for all people living with a prosthesis or a medical implant.

Every year, more than 1.5 million joint replacement surgeries are performed worldwide. Behind each of these procedures is a person striving for greater mobility, quality of life and independence. This is exactly where we, as machine builders, see our responsibility.

I sincerely hope that through our work at Haas Schleifmaschinen, we can make a small but meaningful contribution to ensuring that medical implants are manufactured with greater precision, reliability and durability and that patients truly feel better after their surgery than they did before.

Because in the end, it’s not just about technology. It’s about people.