Adapt at program speed. Stay audit-ready by default.
Roll out approved changes, catch defects at the station, and trace every serial number.
Demand is strong, and each new program brings engineering changes and customer requirements that paper travelers and legacy systems can struggle to follow. Meeting it tends to take a production system your engineers can change safely, with records that stay audit-ready.
Tulip is a composable frontline operations platform used to implement a composable MES. It connects to the PLM, ERP and QMS you already run, so operators build to the current revision and each unit leaves its own record.
BOMs, revisions and work orders flow in from PLM and ERP, and updated work instructions are versioned, approved and deployed to every workstation. Operators can build to the current revision, and each change records what changed, when and why.
Error-proofed, step-by-step workflows guide complex builds and enforce training and certification requirements at the station. New hires follow the same approved process as veterans, which reduces reliance on tribal knowledge.
Serial numbers, materials, inspections and sign-offs are captured for each unit as the work happens, so teams spend less time rebuilding records of assembly before an audit. Trace forward or backward from any serial number or lot.
Inspection steps and error-proofing sit inside the workflow, so defects tend to surface at the station before they travel to the next one. Inspectors follow a digital first article checklist, and out-of-tolerance results route into nonconformance and rework.
Tool status and calibration history are tracked, calibration steps are guided, and audit-ready records are generated. Calibration records are on hand when the auditor asks, with no paper logbook to search.
Work orders are tracked through the floor as they move, with andons and alerts sent to the right person for a fast response. Supervisors can see bottlenecks as they form, well before the end-of-shift report.
How Tulip gets approved changes to the floor and audit evidence out of the work, compared with a legacy MES, a QMS with an MES extension, a stack of point tools, or paper travelers and spreadsheets.
Revisions come in from your PLM, and each updated work instruction is versioned, approved and deployed to every workstation with a record of what changed, when and why. A new program rarely has to wait on a customization project, and AI Composer can turn existing SOPs into a first working version in the standard cloud.
Serial numbers, materials, inspections and sign-offs are captured at the station while operators work, and each action is logged with the time and the context. For customers pursuing CMMC, FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency brings inherited controls and a smaller audit scope, and your QMS stays the system of record for documents and CAPA.
Engineers and supervisors refine work instructions as programs change, inside the guardrails IT defines. One architecture runs beside the PLM, ERP and A&D MES you already have, and it can scale from a first line to multiple sites without re-platforming. AI-assisted work in the standard cloud inherits the same permissions, approvals and audit trail.
Test Devices, an aerospace testing supplier, replaced paper binders and travelers for serialized aerospace parts.
“We've had several AS9100 audits recently. Tulip helps with audit readiness by giving us traceability across production and quality, and it gives us a practical way to address findings as they come up."
Avon Technologies, a defense supplier of protective equipment, moved regulated operations from batch to flow manufacturing and migrated its MES.
"It would have been an 18-month journey and about $2 million if we had done it the legacy way. Instead, we delivered it in six months and a fraction of the cost."
Pratt Miller Engineering, a defense systems maker, uses digital workflows to adapt quickly to new defense requirements.
"When we give prospective customers a tour of our facilities, we typically show our Tulip apps and demonstrate how we are able to adapt rapidly with design changes. We get very positive feedback. I think it gives us a competitive advantage when it comes to winning bids for contracts."
Aerospace and defense manufacturers generally need software that carries engineering changes to the floor under approval, captures as-built records as work happens, and connects to the PLM, ERP and quality systems already in place. Tulip is a composable frontline operations platform used to implement a composable MES, and teams typically start with one use case on one line, such as guided assembly, in-process quality or traceability, then expand.
A manufacturing execution system for aerospace and defense should provide controlled change, so revisions from PLM reach operators only after approval, along with serial-level genealogy that records each unit as it's built, in-process inspection and nonconformance handling, open APIs to your ERP, PLM and QMS, and a security posture IT can review once. Tulip addresses each of these on one data model, and a first use case can go live in weeks, with the approvals that govern the change before it reaches the floor.
Operators tend to work to the latest revision when each work instruction is tied to the revision it belongs to, and the revision is released through an approval step with no manual handoff between PLM, ERP and the floor. In Tulip, open APIs pull the latest BOMs, revisions and work orders from PLM and ERP, such as Arena, OpenBOM, Teamcenter and Duro, and updated work instructions are versioned, approved and deployed to every workstation with a record of what changed, when and why. Pratt Miller Engineering uses digital workflows to adapt quickly to new defense requirements.
Audit preparation tends to shrink when serial numbers, materials, inspections and sign-offs are recorded at the station as the work happens, because there's little left to reconstruct later. Tulip captures those records for each unit as operators work, attributes every action to a user with a time and date stamp, and lets teams trace forward or backward, for example everything that happened to serial X, or all units built from lot Y. Test Devices replaced paper binders and travelers for serialized aerospace parts and reduced admin time for traveler creation and record storage by 79%.
Defects travel less far when inspection and error-proofing sit inside each step of the work, so an out-of-tolerance result is caught at the station and routed for disposition right away. Tulip builds inspection steps and error-proofing into guided workflows, captures nonconformances in real time, and supports first article inspection records tied to the exact part or serial number. AirBorn embedded real-time quality checks into production and reported a 30% reduction in scrap and rework.
Capacity tends to grow without added headcount when standard work is digitized once, enforced at the station, and shared across lines, so new operators reach the same standard as experienced ones. Tulip guides operators through error-proofed, step-by-step workflows that enforce training and certification requirements at execution. Skydio, a drone maker, increased efficiency and throughput by 20% without expanding its workforce.
CMMC applies to contractors that handle controlled unclassified information (CUI), and on the floor, CUI includes drawings, specs, inspection criteria, travelers, test data and genealogy records. Paper travelers, shared spreadsheets and homegrown tools outside IT's view can all fall into scope, and every additional system that touches CUI adds to what must be validated and governed. Starting with one narrow, high-value use case keeps that scope small.
Tulip supports customers pursuing CMMC with inherited security controls, a smaller audit scope, and one platform for IT to evaluate instead of several. For CUI, customers add the FedRAMP environment, and Tulip has achieved FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency, which differs from a sponsored FedRAMP authorization. CMMC certification belongs to the contractor. A common starting point is one CUI-scoped app, such as a single CUI-flagged work instruction or inspection record.
Tulip connects to PLM, ERP and MES through open APIs, database connectors and common OT protocols, with encrypted traffic and least-privilege access, and your existing systems stay the systems of record. Open APIs pull in the latest BOMs, revisions and work orders from PLM and ERP, for example Arena, OpenBOM, Teamcenter and Duro, and the connector library includes SAP S/4HANA, NetSuite, PTC Arena and Aras. At a prime with an established A&D MES, Tulip runs as the adjacent execution layer for operator workflows and quality apps. In the FedRAMP environment, systems connect through cloud connectors set up with Tulip, so check current feature availability with us.
No. Tulip is cloud only and doesn't offer on-premises deployment, although it connects to on-premises systems through secure connectors. For ITAR and EAR data, Tulip offers AWS GovCloud, and for CUI, a FedRAMP environment, both as add-ons. The FedRAMP environment's features differ from the standard cloud, so confirm specific features with us before you plan around them.
See how aerospace and defense manufacturers carry engineering changes to the floor and capture as-built records with guided assembly, genealogy and in-process quality. If CMMC is on your timeline, we can start with a CUI-scoped version of your first app.