Golden Spade Spotlight

Inside the walls of MIT, a unique learning environment is taking shape. It’s not just a classroom or a typical lab; it’s a fully operational factory where students don’t just learn about manufacturing. They live it. At the heart of this initiative is Russel Bradley, PhD candidate and the winner of Tulip’s 2025 Golden Spade Award. As the leader of the FrED Factory, Russel is pioneering a new, hands-on approach to operations education, bridging the gap between theory and real-world practice to cultivate the next generation of manufacturing leaders.

The FrED (Fiber Extrusion Device) Factory began as Russel’s Master's thesis project, born from a desire to create a more immersive and practical learning experience. "You can't learn manufacturing from a textbook," Russel explains. "It's a really complex topic with internal dynamics: the flow of people, materials, and the variation that comes with volume production. We wanted to build a space where students are fully immersed, solving real design and manufacturing problems." The lab serves a dual purpose: it’s a production facility that builds and ships Fiber Extrusion Device ‘lab-in-a-box” education kits to customers, and it’s a dynamic learning environment where students become the engineers, operators, and managers.

To bring this vision to life, Russel needed a digital backbone that was as flexible and accessible as the lab itself. A chance meeting at a local conference provided the answer. Tulip's no-code, composable platform was the perfect fit.

"The unique idea here is that we don't build this lab and then give it to the students," Russel notes. "We give it to them as is, and we have them develop the production system from scratch." This approach empowers students without software engineering backgrounds to build and iterate on their own digital solutions, from creating a bill of materials management app to designing complex production management apps.

"We want them to get under the hood of these systems. That’s how they really learn," he says. This philosophy is not just a teaching method; it’s a validated academic model. His team’s work and the educational impact of the FrED Factory were recently the subject of a publication in the prestigious journal, Manufacturing Letters. The article explores how no-code and low-code platforms can lower barriers to hands-on learning in digital manufacturing.

Under Russel’s guidance, students at the FrED Factory have built a comprehensive Manufacturing Execution System (MES) from the ground up. The system started with foundational apps for assembly and has since expanded to include a suite of interconnected solutions that manage the entire production lifecycle of the Fiber Extrusion Devices.

Students developed an inventory management system that tracks parts and sends alerts when stock is low. They created digital work instructions that also capture cycle time data, allowing them to analyze and improve their own processes. When students identified a need for better production planning, they built a work order scheduling system to manage the factory’s backlog. Most recently, they developed a full-fledged quality control station, connecting digital calipers and power supplies directly to Tulip to test gearbox performance and log the data automatically.

"Students are solving real manufacturing problems," Russel says, "which eventually gets to the point of delivering good working products on-time for customers."

The impact of the FrED Factory extends far beyond MIT. Through a collaboration with Tec de Monterrey in Mexico, Russel and his team are scaling their educational model. A group of undergraduate students from Tec de Monterrey participated in an immersive program at the FrED Factory, where they learned to build with Tulip and solve operational challenges.

Inspired by their experience, they returned to Mexico and built their own version of the factory, dubbed the "Al-FrED-o Factory." There, they developed a fully automated assembly line powered by Tulip, integrating with an ERP system to manage customer orders and PLCs to run the robotics. Their work was so successful that it won a university-wide award. This success story is a powerful testament to the "FrED-ification" model, as Russel calls it, a replicable framework for bringing hands-on manufacturing education to universities everywhere.

Russel’s work is fundamentally changing how students learn about manufacturing, shifting the focus from passive observation to active creation. By giving students the right tools and the freedom to build, he’s fostering a builder’s mindset that will prepare them to lead in the age of digital transformation.

For other students looking to make their mark in the world of operations, his advice is straightforward: "Just get started. Build something. Don’t be afraid to try, and don’t be afraid to fail." It’s this spirit of fearless innovation and continuous learning that defines Russel’s work at the FrED Factory and makes him a true Groundbreaker.