I stand corrected. It seems the issues with the newly installed and not properly working equipment did not only hamper the milestones by diverting the team's attention away from the milestones, but these issues by themselves were responsible for the milestone delays.

I am assuming here that the "new piece of equipment installed in late 2014" is the sputter tool. It was announced in the news release as of 2015-01-08: "In a parallel development at the UCONN lab, a new additional sputter tool was received and accepted. The tool is nearing completion of internal qualification."

Obviously the POET team already has an older sputter tool, since the new one is "additional". In comparison to the old one the team expects speed and quality gains from the new sputter tool: "Deployment of the new tool will drastically reduce prototype fabrication cycle times as well as improve the quality and process control of key films used in the process flow."

However (an unfortunately), "these will be critical not only to current development, but also necessary for transfer to eventual manufacturing stages."

So, yes, the sputter tool's malfunctioning directly hampered the achievements of the milestone targets.

The good news is that the problem has been resolved now. I would assume the milestone completions won't take the whole Q2, but who knows!