Secure and Composable: A Platform Strategy for Defense Manufacturing

In aerospace and defense manufacturing, growth depends on two capabilities that are often in tension: security and adaptability.

If you handle CUI, support DoD programs, or plan to bid on them, your digital environment is under constant scrutiny. CMMC requirements are taking shape. Prime contractors are tightening flow-down expectations. IT reviews now influence whether you qualify for work at all.

At the same time, improving operations is hard enough. Increasing throughput, reducing rework, maintaining traceability, and scaling across programs already stretch engineering, quality, and IT teams. Adding federal security expectations on top of that can slow change to a crawl.

The challenge isn’t choosing between continuous adaptability and compliance.It’s whether your systems are built to support both secure, controlled change.

You’ve probably seen the pattern. A new software solution requires a security assessment. Expanding to another facility increases complexity. Adding a niche quality tool introduces another vendor to evaluate, document, and monitor.

Over time, the stack loses cohesion. Systems overlap. Controls vary by environment. Documentation lives in too many places. What started as practical problem-solving turns into governance overhead.

Meanwhile, some legacy systems that passed security reviews years ago are too rigid for today’s production needs. Engineering wants iteration. Operations wants flexibility on the floor. Quality wants traceability. IT wants control.

When the platform can’t support all four, teams end up working around it. Spreadsheets reappear. Shadow processes creep in. Audit exposure increases.

Adaptability and assurance have to operate within the same architecture. That requires a platform designed to handle both from the start.

Tulip has achieved FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency, aligning our platform with the federal baseline used for regulated and defense-related workloads.

For manufacturers, the impact goes beyond the designation.

FedRAMP Moderate maps to a defined set of security controls around access management, data protection, logging, incident response, and continuous monitoring. When your production system sits inside that boundary, you start from a position of documented, structured control rather than rebuilding it for each program.

Instead of stitching together point solutions that each require separate review, you can standardize on a single secure foundation and expand within it. Work instructions, eDHR records, quality workflows, deviation management, and traceability processes operate under the same security posture.

That changes conversations with primes and auditors. You’re no longer explaining how you plan to manage risk. You’re showing how it’s already managed at the platform level.

Manufacturers planning to grow in defense and other regulated sectors are making deliberate structural decisions.

Every system that touches production data expands audit scope, integration risk, and documentation overhead. Instead of managing separate tools for work instructions, quality records, traceability, and deviations, leading teams consolidate those workflows within Tulip. Fewer systems mean fewer boundaries to defend, fewer vendors to reassess, and less revalidation as programs expand.

As Pratt Miller Engineering transitioned into full-scale production, customer requirements continued to evolve. Using Tulip, they updated modular instruction sets while maintaining revision control and operator alignment. Changes were implemented quickly, but always within a governed system.

In regulated bids, demonstrating controlled adaptability signals maturity. Customers see both flexibility and discipline.

At Avon Technologies, Lean and Kaizen initiatives moved faster once improvement was built into the digital layer. Teams used shared app templates and standardized data structures to experiment and deploy changes in hours while maintaining governance. If a new inspection step or data requirement emerged, engineers could update the app the same day without breaking system integrity.

Compliance did not sit outside improvement efforts. It was embedded in how changes were deployed.

CMMC assessments will examine how systems handling CUI are configured, accessed, and monitored. With Tulip deployed on infrastructure aligned to FedRAMP Moderate controls, operational workflows and security posture are connected. Role-based access, audit trails, and structured data capture are built into execution, reducing the likelihood of disruptive system redesign or control retrofits when formal assessments begin.

In regulated manufacturing, growth depends on architecture. The teams pulling ahead are building systems that support scale, controlled change, and security at the same time.

Security requirements will continue to evolve. CMMC will mature. Customer audits will become more detailed. Data classification expectations will tighten.

If your production systems can’t keep pace, growth slows.

FedRAMP Moderate Equivalency is one step toward infrastructure that can absorb those changes without constant disruption. At Tulip, we focus on helping manufacturers improve throughput, reduce deviations, and maintain traceability while operating inside a security model built for regulated growth.

In regulated environments, the manufacturers that move forward are the ones who treat security as part of their production system, not a layer added after the fact.