Meet the 2025 Groundbreakers

Every year, the Groundbreaker Awards celebrate the heart of the Tulip community: the builders, innovators, and leaders who are making a difference at their organizations and shaping the future of operations. This year, we were blown away by the record number of nominations we received from around the world. The 2025 winners represent a remarkable diversity of industries, roles, and challenges—from manufacturing life-saving cell therapies and medical devices to educating the next generation of engineers. They prove that the right tools and a human-centric approach can drive transformational change at global scale.

We are thrilled to officially announce and congratulate the 2025 Groundbreaker Award winners!

The Golden Shovel Award honors the individual citizen developers who are building creative and impactful solutions to solve their toughest challenges. This year’s winners are a testament to the fact that a builder can come from anywhere. They range from engineers to UX designers, tackling everything from machine monitoring and quality control to full-scale MES deployments. Each demonstrates how deep operational knowledge combined with powerful tools can drive meaningful change from the front lines.

Mario Ríos, Site Operational Technology Lead, Smith+Nephew

As Operational Technology Lead at Smith+Nephew in Costa Rica, Mario Ríos has established himself as a vital bridge between the company’s digital strategy and its frontline workers. With a background in mechatronics engineering, Mario has been instrumental in deploying transformative solutions with Tulip. He developed a comprehensive, end-to-end work order tracking system in just three weeks, providing unprecedented real-time visibility into operations. This solution dramatically reduced work-in-progress inventory and improved collaboration between teams by creating a single source of truth. Mario's approach of starting with small, impactful projects to build trust has turned initial skeptics into avid supporters. He is now launching a formal citizen developer community to empower his colleagues to solve their own challenges, scaling the impact of digital transformation across the site.

John Boyle, Senior Manager of Manufacturing Operations, Pratt Miller Engineering

John Boyle has been a driving force in Pratt Miller Engineering's digital transformation journey. With a background in mechanical engineering and PLC programming, John spearheaded the evolution of Tulip from a tool for digital work instructions into the company's primary Manufacturing Execution System (MES). He has single-handedly developed critical applications for inventory management, quality inspection, and a supplier quality database. One of his most impactful projects was replacing a cumbersome SharePoint-based work order request system with a user-centric Tulip application now used by everyone in the company. John's collaborative, hands-on approach with shop floor technicians has been key to driving adoption and creating a culture where digital solutions are not just accepted but actively sought after. He is now mentoring a new wave of citizen developers, ensuring a sustainable culture of continuous improvement at Pratt Miller Engineering.

Zachary Kreiley, Continuous Improvement Engineer, Stanley Black & Decker

Zachary Kreiley, Continuous Improvement Engineer at Stanley Black & Decker, has leveraged his unique journey from welder to digital transformation leader to drive profound operational changes. Drawing on his shop floor experience, Zach identified key areas for improvement and taught himself how to build solutions in Tulip. He developed a series of unique Production Tracking applications that broke down information silos between 5 departments, creating a single source of truth for monitoring work in progress which has boosted morale and cross-department collaboration. Zach also spearheaded a complex integration between SAP and Tulip at his site, automating a production scheduling process that previously took up to 20 hours per week of manual data entry. His most innovative creation is a fully digital, hands-off Kanban system that uses Tulip Automations to analyze production schedules and trigger replenishment jobs automatically, preventing communication failures that could otherwise lead to stockouts or overstocking, all without any human intervention.

Darren O'Neil, Industrial Engineering Manager, Test Devices by SCHENCK

Darren O'Neil, Industrial Engineering Manager at Test Devices by Schenck, is single-handedly steering his company from paper-based processes to a dynamic digital future. After finding traditional MES solutions to be too rigid, Darren discovered Tulip and began building apps within an hour. He undertook an ambitious initial project to digitize the company's core paper-based manufacturing process, creating a comprehensive end-to-end system. One of his most transformative solutions is an "all-in-one" application for managing over 450 calibrated tools. This app centralizes tracking, automates calibration warnings, and integrates directly with work instruction apps to ensure the correct, calibrated tool is used for every job, creating a complete and accurate digital record. Darren's work has fostered a builder's mindset at Schenck, where colleagues now proactively seek digital solutions to their operational challenges.

The Greenhouse Award recognizes the teams that create fertile ground for innovation to flourish and scale across their entire organization. From a global pharmaceutical leader transforming its packing operations across 17 sites to an aerospace and defense manufacturer rapidly standing up new production lines, this year's winners showcase the power of collaboration. They are turning individual sparks of ingenuity into organization-wide digital transformation, proving that a culture of continuous improvement is the key to sustainable growth.

AstraZeneca's Digital Changeovers Team

AstraZeneca's cross-functional Digital Changeovers Team transformed pharmaceutical packing operations by developing and then rapidly scaling a digital solution to 17 sites and over 100 packing lines in just three months. By replacing a paper-based process with digital, user-centric workflows, the team has gained unprecedented visibility into changeover activities at the task level, leading to significant benefits like a 29% reduction in changeover time and 50% reduction in variability on one production line. With dedicated, collaborative efforts from production teams and sites, DCO is driving a cultural transformation across the organization, not just adoption of a new digital tool. As engagement and adoption continue to grow, the team is building on these gains to further enhance operational efficiency and excellence across their global network.

Avon Technologies

Avon Technologies, a leader in life-saving respiratory and head protection systems, has demonstrated a remarkable commitment to operational excellence, driven by a core strategy of Lean manufacturing enabled by a composable approach to operations. In a strategic initiative, they successfully launched two completely new, highly-regulated production lines in under six months, a feat achieved through close collaboration across their engineering, production, continuous improvement, and business systems teams. Using Tulip's platform as the core tool to orchestrate production, quality, and management, Avon met all stringent traceability requirements while achieving key business goals. This accomplishment is a testament to their deep-rooted culture of continuous improvement, using new digital tools to empower teams to apply Lean and Kaizen principles in real-time to support the critical mission of their customers.

Innovafeed

Innovafeed, a company at the forefront of revolutionizing animal and plant nutrition, has achieved a monumental 500% increase in production at its Nesle, France facility, the largest insect farm in the world. By fostering a culture of rapid experimentation and maintaining a disciplined approach to scalability, Innovafeed has transformed its operations and empowered its team to collaboratively solve complex challenges. The company's success is rooted in its diverse team, a "try first" principle, and a commitment to standardized data and processes, which has enabled them to build a flexible and adaptable Manufacturing Execution System (MES). This has not only optimized their production but has also expanded their support across the organization, from commercial teams to data analytics, setting a new standard for operational excellence.

BD (Becton Dickinson)

In a demanding medical device manufacturing environment, BD successfully overcame the limitations of a complex legacy system to achieve continuous improvement and operational excellence, deploying Tulip across 10+ global sites. The team integrated Tulip with their existing databases, SAP, and various other software tools to power a transition from paper-based processes to dynamic digital workflows. This transformation has empowered the operators on the shop floor, who are now actively engaged in process improvement, contributing innovative ideas that are quickly brought to life as Tulip apps. Building on this success, BD has established a mature Center of Excellence (COE) to scale their impact, using a repeatable model that continues to empower citizen developers and eliminate paper from their operations.

New this year, the Trellis Award celebrates the essential role our partners play in supporting and guiding our customers on their transformation journeys. A trellis provides the structure needed for growth, and our partners do just that. The inaugural winners highlight the breadth of our partner ecosystem, from a global consulting firm architecting enterprise-wide deployments to a team of seasoned manufacturing experts delivering hands-on, value-focused solutions that accelerate success for manufacturers of all sizes.

Accenture

As a pivotal partner in the smart factory transformations of global enterprises, Accenture guides its clients toward modern, composable manufacturing execution systems (MES). It helps manufacturers across industries architect scalable blueprints for agile, integrated platforms designed for rapid, multi-site deployment. Their strategic approach addresses complex IT/OT challenges while championing a culture of citizen development, empowering client teams to build and adapt their own solutions. This partnership model is instrumental in accelerating time-to-value and establishing a foundation for continuous, frontline-led innovation at global scale.

Providence Consulting Group (PCG)

Providence Consulting Group (PCG) exemplifies what it means to be a true partner in digital transformation. With a team of seasoned manufacturing experts, PCG’s approach is rooted in a simple but powerful philosophy: customer first, focus on value, and do the right thing. This is embodied in their “SmartFactory” solution, a commercial ERP-ready package built on Tulip that accelerates time-to-value for manufacturers across industries. In a recent project with a construction materials manufacturer, PCG put their operator-first methodology into practice. By working side-by-side with the frontline team in a challenging shop floor environment, they rapidly customized the solution to drive a 100% user adoption rate at go-live. Beyond their direct customer impact, PCG has invested deeply in the Tulip ecosystem, built a thriving internal team of certified consultants who combine their extensive manufacturing knowledge with the power of the platform to deliver transformative results.

We are also proud to introduce the Golden Spade Award, recognizing the next generation of operations leaders. This award celebrates the students and interns who are already applying their creativity and passion to solve real-world problems. Our first-ever winners are true pioneers, bridging the gap between academic theory and industry practice at world-class institutions like MIT and Tec de Monterrey. They are building the factories of the future and inspiring their peers to become the builders of tomorrow.

Russel Bradley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Russel Bradley, PhD candidate at MIT, is transforming manufacturing education with the FrED Factory, a unique learning environment where students don’t just study operations – they build and run a real production system. Using Tulip's composable platform as the digital backbone, Russel empowers students to develop a full Manufacturing Execution System from the ground up, tackling everything from bill of material management to creating connected assembly and quality control stations. His "FrED-ification" model for hands-on learning has already scaled beyond campus, inspiring a successful collaboration with students from Tec de Monterrey who replicated the factory and built their own award-winning automated assembly line. Russel is cultivating the next generation of manufacturing leaders by bridging the gap between theory and practice, proving that the best way to learn is by building.

Ángel Alarcón, Tec de Monterrey

As a research intern at MIT and student at Tec de Monterrey, Ángel Alarcón is a trailblazer for the next generation of manufacturing leaders and one of the first-ever winners of the Golden Spade award. After learning Tulip during his internship, Ángel championed its adoption at his home university in Mexico. He led a team in developing a semi-automated assembly line for RFID devices, building an integration between a commercial ERP system and Tulip’s MES capabilities to manage the entire workflow from a customer order to the manufacturing line. The project earned an award in a highly competitive university engineering fair. The team’s project demonstrated the power of composable, no-code solutions to a jury of industry leaders and paved the way for future student innovation.