Bringing No-Code To Your Manufacturing Databases – Introducing Tables

This week, we introduced a new feature that brings the “no-code” in Tulip to your databases: Tables.

Tables lets you set up a real-time customizable database that fits your unique business processes. This lets you easily organize, store, use, and enrich your production data, without writing any code.

We created Tulip as a no-code manufacturing app platform to let frontline engineers create apps to drive the digital transformation of their organizations.

While our platform makes it easy for engineers to build apps without writing any code, they still had to rely on third-party databases and SQL servers to store and retrieve data.

As more engineers adopted our platform, it became clear that in order to fulfill our no-code promise, we needed to bring that to the database.

With the launch of Tables, this vision is now a reality. You can now store, use and enrich all your production data, natively in Tulip, without having to write any code.

We recognize every manufacturing operation has unique processes.

With Tables, we want to make it easy for your team to build custom data models around them, so your systems adapt to your operational needs, and not the other way around.

For example, imagine you want to create a Tulip App for work orders.

You can now create a table to define a Work Order data model, store your work order data, and retrieve and update the work order information from your Tulip apps.

You can do the same with all your manufacturing processes. You can create tables for your Bill of Materials (BOM), skill management, material handling apps, and so on.

Traditional manufacturing systems like MES would require you to change your processes to fit their pre-defined data models or invest heavily in customizing them.

Tables flips the equation, letting you model your data around your operational needs.

The most powerful feature of Tables is that you can use Tulip triggers to update your data in real-time.

This means your live production data can be captured and used in real-time by all your Tulip apps and accessed by Tulip Analytics, just like a database.

After you start using Tables to model all your production processes, your production data will be automatically organized in a single place.

Tables lets you collect data from your Tulip apps, but you can also integrate Tables with your other shop floor systems such as ERP or MES, using Tulip connectors.

By centralizing all your data, you can feed other Tulip apps, enrich your data, and gain insights using Tulip analytics.

You can rely on Tables to store and retrieve production data, without trading off the flexibility you need in order to adapt to your team’s improvement opportunities.

This agility is possible thanks to Tables’ intuitive design, which makes it feel more like a spreadsheet than a database:

Creating a table only takes a few clicks, and you can create as many as you need.

If you want to extend your tables, you just need to add a new column.

Furthermore, you can capture all your production data types, from numbers to booleans to barcodes, and even images.

With the introduction of Tables, our platform now has truly brought no-code to the entire manufacturing app stack.

App Builder lets you create interfaces and add dynamic logic through a drag and drop visual programming environment.

Shop Floor IoT lets you connect your apps and devices in a plug and play manner.

Analytics lets you build visualizations for all your production data.

Connectors let you integrate your apps and other systems.

The missing link, databases, has been solved. With Tables, you can finally integrate all your data in a single place – without having to know how to code!

Interested in learning more about Tables? Try it for free with our 30-day trial.