After more than two years in development, Tulip is unveiling its IoT-enabled App Engine at the 2017 Hannover Messe Fair, Hannover, Germany, April 24–28 in USA pavilion, Hall 6 at stand G52/8. Tulip, a spinout from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), brings the power of Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced analytics to the front-line engineer through its shop-floor apps. This self-service technology fills the gap between rigid back-end manufacturing information technology (IT) systems and the operations taking place on the shop floor.
While automation in factory floors continues to grow, manufacturers often find their hands-on workforce left behind, using paper and legacy technology. Manufacturers are seeing a need to empower its workforce with intuitive digital tools. Tulip lets front-line engineers create flexible shop-floor apps that connect workers, machines, and existing IT systems. These apps guide shop-floor operations enabling real-time data collection. Tulip’s IoT gateway integrates the devices, sensors, and machines on the shop floor making it easy to monitor and interact with previously siloed data streams. The platform’s self-serve analytics engine lets manufacturers turn this data into actionable insights, supporting continuous process improvement.
Tulip is approaching the problem differently than other tech vendors. Rather than offering a rigid software solution that cannot address customers’ ever-changing needs, Tulip has created a modular platform that gives engineers the tools they need to create their own digital solutions.
In one analysis examining the impact of Tulip’s system at Jabil, a leading global contract manufacturer, Deloitte writes:
“Tulip is a new cloud-based operating system that feeds IoT production-line data in real time to workers on a shop floor through their smartphones and tablets. By monitoring this information stream as they perform their production tasks, workers can respond on the fly to process changes. The results? Production yield increased by more than 10%, and manual assembly quality issues were reduced by 60% in the initial four weeks of operation.
Other customers have seen similar results, including over 20% increase in throughput, and up to 90% reduction in the training time required to qualify new operators.”
Tulip is deployed at dozens of F500 customer sites in six countries across multiple industries: consumer electronics, aerospace and defense, contract manufacturing, automotive, apparel, marine, medical-devices and pharmaceuticals.