In 1939, three years before the commencement of the Manhattan Project, the physicist Niels Bohr insisted that nuclear fissile materials (needed for the construction of atomic weapons) could only be produced by turning the United States into a gigantic factory <cite>[1]</cite>. As any World War II historian will tell you, that's pretty much what happened. I have been thinking a lot about that recently, as TCG Machines has rapidly grown from a small, primarily research and development focused business, into a 20-person-strong production centre. Please understand, I am not attempting to draw a direct comparison between our enterprise and what amounted to perhaps the most consequential international scientific effort in human history. Rather, now more than ever, I appreciate the transition from an initial innovation (releasing energy from the atom / creating a TCG card sorting robot) to the mass production of that innovation.

Despite a substantial increase in our staff, actually getting machines built and delivered has remained incredibly challenging. One would intuit that a five-fold increase in production staff would result in a five-fold increase in output, right? Well, so far that has not panned out, and I now understand all too well what Tesla CEO Elon Musk meant when, on September 7th 2021, he tweeted, “Production is hard.” I mean, every step down this road has been tough, so perhaps this latest difficulty should not come as a surprise. But man, I would really love to know when things are meant to get easier! Let’s review:

- Design a physical machine to sort trading cards? Hard.
- Write the software to scan, identify, and catalog those cards? Hard.
- Build an online inventory system to manage the scanned cards? Hard.
- Prove (and improve) the product in a series of customer beta trials? Hard.
- Commercialize and market the customer-vetted product? Hard.
- Raise funds and build out a team to support the newly commercialized product? Very hard.
- Mass produce the product? Possibly the hardest thing yet – and that is saying something!

That’s enough whining from me, but this is yet another one of those things that really cannot be appreciated until you're in it. Producing a commercial product at scale is freakin' difficult. Perhaps more difficult still is forecasting that production accurately. At least in this respect we keep good company. World renown electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors (now just Tesla), has had production delays with every one of their vehicle models <cite>[2]</cite>. This is by no means unique to Tesla, pretty well all automakers miss launch deadlines and delivery expectations now and again, with the global COVID19 pandemic increasing these events to epidemic proportions (sorry, couldn’t help myself). By this comparison I do not suggest to excuse our poor forecasting (we know we need to do better), but want to highlight the fact that even much larger and better equipped companies than our own, and lead by some of the world’s most brilliant minds, still have a heck of a hard time coming up with accurate delivery estimates.

<img src="https://tcgmachinesprod.azureedge.net/strapi/assets/twitter_quote_shaming_tesla_ce97561f50.webp" alt="Tweet shaming Tesla for poor delivery forecasts" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">

With all that said, production is indeed rolling along and we are building machines in droves! No need for any **#debacle** with us :P

![Several people focused on production](https://tcgmachinesprod.azureedge.net/strapi/assets/busy_production_the_dark_side_648x486_cb73f81094.webp)

![Rows of scan blasters](https://tcgmachinesprod.azureedge.net/strapi/assets/so_many_machines_hq_648x486_7b6fc79f25.webp)

![Machines in boxes](https://tcgmachinesprod.azureedge.net/strapi/assets/machines_in_boxes2_648x864_5feac1fc69.webp)

To our customers, from all of us here at TCG Machines, thank you, and our most sincere gratitude for your continued patience. Bonus points if you can tell who was actually present for our company photo and who had to be Photoshopped in.

![TCG Machines team photo](https://tcgmachinesprod.azureedge.net/strapi/assets/whole_team_photo_648x263_e38461d4fa.webp)

## References

1. R. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1986, p. 500.
2. A. Levine-Weinberg, "Tech Contributors," 6 July 2016. [Online]. Available: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-has-a-long-history-of-missing-its-targets-its-upcoming-model-3-may-not-be-any-different-2016-7" target="_blank">https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-has-a-long-history-of-missing-its-targets-its-upcoming-model-3-may-not-be-any-different-2016-7</a>. [Accessed 11 September 2022].



We stand on the shoulders of giants, yet seem destined to make their same giant missteps! Production of the PhyzBatch-9000 automatic card sorter is in full swing, and we are learning many important lessons the hard way.

small_production-is-hard.webp

thumbnail_production-is-hard.webp

production-is-hard.webp

Production is Hard

TCG Machines’ proprietary PhyzBatch-9000 recognizes and categorizes cards by nearly any metric, including card condition, type, and foil determination.