Celebrating the Innovators in Frontline Operations

Mario Ríos

Site Operational Technology Lead, Smith+Nephew

• Developed an end-to-end work order tracking system in just three weeks, which provided real-time operational visibility that slashed work-in-progress inventory.
• Achieved a 70% reduction in finished goods inventory and a 33% reduction in warehouse space by implementing a Tulip-based package-to-export system.
• Launched a citizen developer community to scale innovation and coached colleagues from the shop floor to build their own digital solutions.

John Boyle

Senior Manager, Manufacturing Operations, Pratt Miller Engineering

• Led the evolution of Tulip into the company's primary Manufacturing Execution System (MES), which transformed everything from raw material procurement to race-day customer transactions.
• Replaced a bottlenecked work order request system with an intuitive Tulip application that became the standard for the entire company.
• Fostered widespread user adoption by working directly with shop floor technicians, iteratively improving apps based on their immediate feedback and building a culture of digital empowerment.

Zachary Kreiley

Continuous Improvement Engineer, Stanley Black & Decker

• Automated his site's production scheduling by building a powerful integration between SAP and Tulip, saving up to 20 hours of manual data entry per week.
• Invented a completely hands-off digital Kanban system that analyzed schedules and automatically triggered replenishment jobs, eliminating stockouts and manual tracking.
• Developed a series of Production Tracking apps for 5 manufacturing areas, each one tailored to the unique workflows of the departments, creating a single source of truth for factory-wide production status and enhancing team collaboration.

Darren O'Neil

Industrial Engineering Manager, Test Devices by SCHENCK

• Digitized the company's entire core manufacturing process, moving it from paper travelers and binders to a comprehensive, end-to-end digital system.
• Created an all-in-one calibrated tool management application that centralized data, automated service warnings, and error-proofed tool selection in real-time.
• Ignited a cultural shift toward citizen development, turning frontline feedback and initial skepticism into a company-wide builder's mindset.

AstraZeneca

Digital Changeovers Team

• Spearheaded a major digital transformation by scaling a new digital changeover solution from a single pilot to 17 sites and over 100 packing lines in just three months.
• Achieved significant operational improvements, with engagement from production teams driving a 29% reduction in average changeover time and 50% reduction in variability on one production line.
• Fostered an organizational transformation by empowering frontline operators and building a powerful culture of user-centric design and in-house innovation.

Avon Technologies

• Stood up two new, complex, highly-regulated production lines in under six months, meeting all strict data genealogy and traceability requirements from day one.
• Leveraged Tulip to orchestrate production and quality, enabling close collaboration between engineering, production, and IT to meet business goals.
• Supercharged Lean manufacturing with a composable approach, empowering teams to achieve true agility and address evolving customer requirements.

Innovafeed

• Achieved a monumental 500% increase in production at the world's largest insect farm by empowering their team with a flexible Manufacturing Execution System (MES).
• Cultivated a "try first" culture of rapid experimentation and feedback, enabling them to collaboratively solve complex challenges and build solutions adapted to their unique processes.
• Expanded the impact of their operational success beyond the shop floor, providing data that fuels business intelligence and supports commercial teams across the organization.

BD (Becton Dickinson)

• Established a scalable Center of Excellence model to successfully deploy Tulip across 10+ global sites, creating a repeatable framework that empowers citizen development.
• Fostered a culture of bottom-up innovation by enabling shop-floor associates to contribute ideas that are rapidly developed and deployed as Tulip apps.
• Modernized their tech infrastructure by integrating Tulip with multiple databases, SAP, and other software tools to digitize paper-based workflows.

Accenture

• Guided global manufacturers through strategic shifts to modern, composable MES platforms, driving enterprise agility and value.
• Architected scalable blueprints for deploying Tulip across global enterprises, establishing best practices for standardized, reusable solutions and cloud-native integration.
• Championed citizen development to empower client teams with the autonomy to build their own applications, fostering cultures of continuous improvement and self-sufficiency.

PCG

• Leveraged the Tulip platform to accelerate manufacturers’ digital transformation journey, unlocking smarter operations and rapid time-to-value at lower cost.
• Built “SmartFactory,” a digital manufacturing solution powered by Tulip, enabling manufacturers to seamlessly connect manufacturing processes, data, execution and more to ERP systems.
• Employed a hands-on, operator-first methodology, co-creating solutions with frontline teams to ensure rapid adoption and solve real-world production challenges.

Russel Bradley

PhD Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Pioneered a hands-on learning factory at MIT where students build and manage a real production floor, developing a comprehensive Manufacturing Execution System from scratch with Tulip.
• Empowered students without software engineering backgrounds to solve complex operational challenges, fostering a builder’s mindset by enabling them to create their own digital tools for inventory, quality, and production management.
• Championed a replicable "FrED-ification" educational model that scaled beyond MIT, inspiring students at Tec de Monterrey to build their own award-winning automated factory.

Ángel Alarcón

Research Intern, MIT & Student, Tec de Monterrey

• Spearheaded the development of a fully automated order-to-manufacturing workflow with a team of fellow students, integrating an ERP system with Tulip for a semi-automated assembly line.
• Creatively enhanced digital work instructions by embedding real-time quality controls that enabled live data collection and analysis directly within an assembly process.
• Pioneered the use of Tulip at his university as part of a learning factory, establishing a new model for hands-on digital manufacturing education and student-led innovation.