The Composable Approach to Scaling Manufacturing Systems Across Global Sites

Every manufacturing leader knows that scaling operations is rarely just about adding floor space. When you bring a new facility online or acquire a competitor, you are inheriting a complex web of legacy machines, incompatible ERP instances, and local processes that do not talk to each other. This digital friction turns strategic expansion into an integration nightmare because most legacy systems were built for control rather than flexibility. They impose rigid templates that fail to account for local realities, forcing operators to find workarounds and causing adoption to stall.

To navigate supply chain disruptions and the chronic skilled labor shortage, global organizations need a scalable manufacturing solution that functions differently. It cannot force a choice between total chaos and rigid bureaucracy.

The goal is to balance central governance with local autonomy. We have found that this balance is best achieved through composability.

In this post, we will look at why scaling digital systems is so difficult and outline the key features to look for when selecting a solution. We will also compare the traditional monolithic approach against composable strategies, so you can see exactly how a flexible architecture drives consistent results across a global factory network.

If scaling were simply a matter of buying more software licenses, every global manufacturer would be fully digital by now. The reality is much messier. Most organizations we work with have tried to scale before and hit the same specific roadblocks.

The "Pilot Purgatory" of Rigid Templates

The most common failure mode starts with a well-intentioned Master Service Agreement. Headquarters selects a new manufacturing execution system, spends months defining a "global template," and pushes it out to the first pilot site.

That is usually where progress stops. The template, designed in a conference room, rarely fits the messy reality of the shop floor. Maybe the pilot site uses different machine controllers, or perhaps their workflow relies on a specific manual check that the software does not support.

When the central tool feels like an obstacle rather than a helper, operators ignore it. They go back to whiteboards and spreadsheets, and the rollout dies in the pilot phase.

The Top-Down Bottleneck

Traditional deployment models rely on a "design centrally, pilot locally" approach. This creates a dangerous dependency on your central IT team. If a site in Mexico needs to modify a quality inspection form, they have to submit a ticket to a central queue.

By the time the request is approved, prioritized, coded, and deployed, the operational reality has already changed.

This bottleneck creates a culture of waiting. Local teams stop asking for improvements because they know they won't happen fast enough to matter.

The Complexity of M&A

Growth often happens through acquisition, which means you are rarely starting with a blank slate. You are stitching together a patchwork of legacy tools. One site runs SAP, another runs Oracle, and a third runs on a custom system built by an engineer who retired five years ago.

Trying to "rip and replace" everything to achieve standardization is expensive and incredibly disruptive to production. It forces successful sites to re-learn how to work, often lowering their efficiency in the name of corporate conformity.

The Widening Talent Gap

Finally, there is the question of who will actually maintain these systems. Deloitte projects 1.9 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2033. If your scaling strategy relies on systems that require specialized coding expertise to update, you are building on a shaky foundation. You simply cannot hire enough developers to support high-code systems across dozens of sites.

Scalability today means choosing tools that your process engineers and operations leaders can manage themselves.

If rigid templates and top-down mandates are the problem, what is the alternative?

You need a system that respects the complexity of your operations rather than trying to flatten it. For manufacturers evaluating MES solutions to scale across a global factory network, we believe these four criteria matter most:

1. Democratized Development - The ability to adapt quickly is your most valuable asset. That means moving innovation to the "edge" where the work actually happens. Look for low-code or no-code platforms that allow process engineers to build and modify applications without waiting for corporate coding resources.

When a quality manager can update a digital inspection form in ten minutes, they do not just solve a problem. They take ownership of the system. This democratization prevents the IT bottleneck and ensures your digital tools evolve as fast as your production processes.

Learn about Tulip's no-code app builder →

2. Composable MES Architecture - Avoid monolithic suites that try to do everything at once. They are heavy, expensive to update, and create a single point of failure. Instead, choose systems built on a composable architecture.

Composability means you can deploy flexible, focused components (like an app specifically for machine monitoring or a digital traveler) that work together, but can be updated independently. This approach allows you to evolve your operations piece by piece. You can swap out a scheduling module or upgrade a tracking app without bringing the entire factory to a halt.

Explore what a composable manufacturing system looks like →

3. Federated Governance - This is the hardest balance to strike, but it is essential for global scale. You need "global oversight with local autonomy." Your solution must allow central teams to standardize what matters (data models, security protocols, and integration standards) while giving local sites the freedom to customize the interface and workflow.

Think of it as setting the guardrails, not drawing the map. A Federated Governance model ensures that a "defect" means the same thing in Germany as it does in Japan, even if the screen the operator uses looks slightly different to accommodate local language or process steps.

See how Tulip approaches governance →

4. Open Connectivity - Scalability in the real world means working with what you have. You are likely not building a greenfield factory every time you expand. You are integrating with existing ERPs, aging PLCs, and a variety of sensors.

A truly scalable solution connects to these layers rather than demanding you replace them. Look for open APIs, standard industrial connectors (like OPC UA and MQTT), and pre-built integrations for major enterprise systems. The goal is to create a unified data layer that sits on top of your existing infrastructure, giving you visibility without the cost of a total rip-and-replace.

See how Tulip enables connectivity across your systems and devices →

Your architecture defines your rollout strategy. A monolithic MES works well if every factory in your network is identical and processes never change. But in the real world, variation is inevitable.

Traditional manufacturing systems try to suppress this variation with rigid global templates, while composable platforms provide a framework to manage it. Here is how the two approaches compare when you try to scale them across a network.

We built Tulip’s to address these exact friction points. Our platform combines the governance IT teams require with the agility frontline operations need. Here is how the specific components work together to enable scale.

Global Governance via Workspaces

Managing a global factory network requires a hierarchy. You cannot give every engineer admin access to the global instance, but you also cannot lock them out completely. We solve this with Workspaces.

Think of a Workspace as a distinct operational environment (eg. a specific site, region, or business unit) that sits within your global tenant. This structure allows you to separate duties clearly:

• Global IT manages the critical infrastructure, including Single Sign-On (SSO), security policies, and standardized connectors to enterprise systems like SAP or NetSuite.

• Site-Level Users deploy and configure the applications relevant to their production lines.

This separation is vital for regulated industries. Workspaces allow for strict data segmentation, ensuring that sensitive production data remains isolated where necessary while still rolling up to global dashboards for executive visibility.

The Library and AI Composer

Standardization often fails because it moves too slowly. If every site has to build their own OEE dashboard from scratch, you lose consistency. If they have to wait for corporate to build it, you lose momentum.

The Tulip Library breaks this cycle. It allows your Center of Excellence to publish pre-approved, validated apps for quality checks, machine monitoring, or digital work instructions that any site can download. The local team pulls the app, maps it to their specific machines, and deploys it in minutes. You stop reinventing the wheel at every facility.

To speed this up further, AI Composer allows you to turn existing documentation into functional apps instantly. You can upload a PDF of a standard operating procedure, and the AI generates a digital workflow with input fields and logic.

For global teams, the AI translation feature automatically localizes these apps into 29 languages, ensuring that a standard process defined in Germany can be immediately understood by operators in Mexico or Vietnam.

Enterprise Infrastructure

Scalability relies on infrastructure that can handle both volume and complexity. Tulip’s cloud-native foundation on AWS delivers the performance, security, and reliability required by enterprise manufacturers.

The platform’s Common Data Model harmonizes information across sites, ensuring that data is comparable without forcing a single, monolithic backend. Tulip’s open architecture integrates with MES, ERP, LIMS, and other enterprise systems through Connectors and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

This allows global manufacturers to connect legacy infrastructure and emerging AI tools in one scalable ecosystem, without needing to rebuild existing systems.

Manufacturers around the world are applying this composable, human-centered approach to scale operations faster and more consistently.

Stanley Black & Decker

Operating across more than 100 manufacturing sites with 48,000 employees, Stanley Black & Decker needed a way to standardize performance without suppressing local agility. They built a "shared digital foundation" using Tulip, deploying common applications for safety, quality, and production tracking that sites could adapt to their specific needs.

The impact of this federated approach was massive. The company achieved a $2 billion reduction in inventory and a 15-point improvement in service levels. By connecting their frontline operations to a unified data model, they also drove double-digit quality gains year over year.

Listen to Stanley Black & Decker's digitization journey →

DMG MORI

When machine tool manufacturer DMG MORI extended Tulip across 17 sites, they faced a classic scalability challenge: language barriers. Their support workflows needed to be understood by operators in Germany, Japan, and the US.

Because Tulip separates the app logic from the interface language, their engineers were able to replicate and localize machine support workflows in over 20 languages. They achieved this global consistency without writing custom code for each region, demonstrating that scalability is about rapid replication rather than rigid enforcement.

See how DMG Mori approaches global scalability →

VEKA

VEKA, a global leader in PVC profile systems, struggled with a lack of visibility into material flow. They replaced paper-based tracking with automated apps that use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan and track materials as they move through the facility.

By scaling this solution across their facilities, they eliminated the data entry errors inherent in paper processes and gained real-time accuracy that improved efficiency across their entire supply chain.

Listen to VEKA's story with Tulip →

Global scalability in manufacturing depends on three things: flexibility, governance, and speed. Tulip’s composable, no-code platform provides all three by combining localized innovation with enterprise-wide consistency.

Rather than relying on rigid templates or top-down rollouts, enterprises use Tulip to build adaptable systems that evolve with their operations. Local teams can optimize continuously, while shared data models and governance ensure every improvement contributes to a unified, global framework.

The result is faster deployment, greater agility, and measurable business impact—reductions in cost and inventory, improved quality, and accelerated responsiveness to change.

Tulip transforms the idea of scale from a one-time rollout to a continuous capability. If you're interested in exploring how Tulip can scale across your operations, reach out to a member of our team today!