AI in Action: 5 Highlights from Operations Calling

Operations Calling 2025 was a landmark event, bringing together the brightest minds in manufacturing and technology to explore the future of the industry. One topic dominated the conversation: AI. With hundreds of attendees participating in the immersive "AI Passport" journey, the enthusiasm for applying AI to real operational challenges was undeniable. From main stage panels on scaling digital solutions in regulated industries to best practice workshops, everyone was asking how AI can drive value in operations.

The event kicked off with keynotes from Tulip Chief Executive Officer Natan Linder and Chief Product and Engineering Officer Mason Glidden, who laid out a bold vision for manufacturing in the age of AI.

Natan's keynote framed manufacturing's urgent challenges–a broken offshoring playbook and a productivity crisis of wasted talent–before tackling the “elephant in the factory” head-on. He presented a human-centric vision for AI not as a replacement for people, but as an amplifier for their ingenuity. He outlined a clear framework for this transformation:

• Compose better solutions faster.
• Orchestrate a digital workforce of humans and AI agents.
• Evolve the enterprise with system-wide insights.

Ultimately, this combination of talent and technology creates a powerful multiplier effect, empowering teams to solve critical production challenges, innovate faster, and drive new levels of operational excellence across the enterprise.

Building on Natan’s vision, Mason’s keynote shifted from the “why” to the “how,” demonstrating the tangible AI tools that will help manufacturers master systems of increasing complexity. In a major announcement, he unveiled the expansion of AI Composer to instantly transform videos into standardized, production-ready applications. He also introduced Composable AI Agents in Tulip, digital teammates designed to manage the intricacies of modern operations. And finally, attendees learned more about OpsMoto, a new dashboard that brings Tulip deployments, assets, and user activity into a unified view, providing the foundation for successfully leveraging AI across operations.

One of the most exciting announcements at Operations Calling was the introduction of Composable AI Agents in Tulip.

Agents are a new, configurable component of your production system that can perceive what’s happening in your operations, decide on the best course of action, and take steps to carry it out. Attendees saw agents in action all over the event, from the Production Dispatcher that was optimizing work order assignments in the Tulip Experience Center to a Shift Summary Reporter that analyzed recent production data and generated a clear handoff report with priority actions for the next shift supervisor.

The Agent Builder, where you can build and configure tailored agents for your operations, will be available for Open Beta this winter. In the meantime, explore our Agent Library to understand how to embed agents across your production system and unlock new efficiencies.

We believe that the best way to understand the power of AI is to experience it firsthand. That's why we created the AI Passport, a series of six interactive experiences that allowed 200+ attendees to get hands-on with Tulip's AI tools, from Agents to AI Composer:

• Building with AI: A walkthrough of how AI can accelerate app developing and global deployment, featuring tools like AI Composer, App Translation, AI Insights, and Agents.

• The Future of Authoring: A walkthrough of recording a live maintenance process on an iPhone, uploading the video to Tulip’s AI Composer…and generating an interactive app in 90 seconds.

• Composable AI Agents: Explaining what agents are, the types of problems they can solve, and how to leverage our Agent Builder to configure tailored agents for your operations.

• Augmenting Production: A deep dive into how AI can supercharge existing workflows on the shop floor with tools like OCR, AI Chat, and Agents.

• AI in Action: AI features were embedded everywhere in our Tulip Experience Center, optimizing processes like assembly, inspection, shipping and more.

• Global Observability Hub: Showing how MCP and Agents will help optimize business management with real-time insights across your operations.

Attendees walked away with the skills and confidence to start applying AI to their operations today.

Missed the event? Explore our AI demos online today.

Some of the biggest buzz from our AI Passport experiences came from the “Future of Authoring” booth, where we unveiled the next leap forward for AI Composer. AI Composer already makes it easy to go from document to app in just a few minutes. But at the Future of Authoring, we answered a crucial question from our customers: “What about the processes that aren't written down?” Tulip demonstrated a groundbreaking new capability: AI Composer will soon turn videos into ready-to-use digital solutions.

Attendees were captivated as they watched an expert record a live maintenance process on an iPhone while narrating the steps. From that single video, AI Composer analyzed the physical actions and transcribed the verbal instructions to instantly generate an interactive, step-by-step app.

Crucially, this AI-generated content is instantly merged with a pre-built application template to ensure the new app conforms to enterprise standards for UI, data models, and best practices right out of the gate. This is a game-changer for capturing undocumented processes and turning it into standardized, scalable workflows, making app authoring faster and more accessible than ever.

To push the boundaries of what's possible with AI, we hosted the first-ever Agent Builders Challenge. We invited 15 of the most innovative app builders from the Tulip community to a day-long workshop where they worked alongside Tulip experts to solve real operational challenges with our new Composable AI Agents. The Builders hailed from a wide range of industries, from pharmaceuticals to industrial equipment manufacturing.

The teams were able to rapidly iterate and develop many innovative solutions, with agents tackling everything from app quality review to defect dispositioning. On Day 2 of the conference, they went onstage to showcase their agents and the key learnings in a live discussion with attendees. The challenge was a powerful demonstration of our community's incredible potential and the transformative power of AI.