Tulip, the leader in Frontline Operations, today announced at Operations Calling 2026 a set of new capabilities that put AI to work for the people who run the factory floor. Together they let operators and engineers build apps, agents, and automations in whatever way fits the job; run and orchestrate them against live machine, vision, and operator data; and scale what works across sites under shared governance.

Tulip opened the keynote with a position: AI has one job, to unlock human potential. Humans are not going away; they will keep working differently and better, and the platform has to be built for them. AI has also made it far easier for more people to write software, which raises the stakes on how that software is deployed, what data it can touch, and what an auditor sees later. Tulip’s answer is composable building blocks that share one data model, so teams can add, update, or replace one without regression-testing the whole production system.

Tulip CEO and Co-founder, Natan Linder put the choice to manufacturers as two options: stay with legacy, monolithic platforms that market AI, or move to a platform purpose-built with AI. “There is no Option 3.”

“A lot of industrial software is still selling the fax machine. It tells you there’s a problem, and then you wait on a vendor or an IT queue to change anything. What we showed today is a step function. An engineer lays out the whole production system in Projects, the Authoring Agent builds it with full context, and developers write code in their own tools when that’s faster. All of it runs in Tulip, at speed and under one governance model,” said Linder.

This year’s announcements follow the lifecycle of a production system: Build, Run & Orchestrate, and Scale.

Build: from idea to a running production system

Every operation is different and keeps changing, so Build is about speed to production, in the way that fits the job.

  • Projects. One canvas to plan, see, and connect every app, automation, agent, table, and connector in a production system. Planning happens in Tulip, next to the apps and data the plan describes, so teams see how all the pieces fit together and what depends on what. Projects is now entering customer testing.

  • Authoring Agent. The Authoring Agent works inside the project’s context, including its apps, data, and the SOPs behind the process. Before it drafts an app, it asks the questions an engineer would ask, such as whether a regulated step needs an electronic signature, and lays out its build plan for the engineer to review. Engineers get more context and more control over what gets built, not a black box. The Authoring Agent is now entering customer testing.

  • Code based apps. Code mode lets engineers build custom frontline apps with their own IDEs and AI coding agents. The platform automatically enforces site portability, operator attribution, zero-trust IT security, and carries Git pull requests to the shop floor as frozen, fully audited versions designed for GxP environments. Code mode is now previewing.

Run & Orchestrate: one operational record, from machine to decision

Run & Orchestrate is about the operation itself: connecting the floor, seeing what happened, and putting people and agents to work on one shared record.

  • Industrial Connectivity. Industrial Connectivity is Tulip’s operational data layer : It brings machine data from your existing drivers, historians, and UNS into Tulip and joins it with real-time human context at scale. Unlike platforms that stop at asset-tag modeling, Tulip ties machine data directly to the order, step, station, and operator, capturing not just what the machine did, but what the human decided and why.

  • Factory Playback. Introduced with NVIDIA last year, Playback gives factories eyes and the ability to act on what they see. It turns local edge server camera streams and advanced vision-language models into a complete, replayable history of the floor. New human activity detection shows where time goes, whether a procedure was followed, and whether a part was assembled to spec. Teams can see exactly what happened, find root causes faster, and stop digging through hours of footage.

  • Composable AI Agents. Introduced at Operations Calling 2025, Composable AI Agents can be used in even more floor operations, always with a preserved operational record for human-in-the-loop quality assurance.

  • Native support for MCP Connectors. Tulip will natively support Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors that work in both directions — external AI tools and coding agents can read from and act on Tulip apps, tables, and workflows, and Tulip agents can call external systems the same way.

Scale: agility that passes an audit

Scale is about governance: carrying what works from one site to every site without starting over, and without giving up control.

  • Enterprise Library. Enterprise Library is a single library of apps and other assets that lives on a customer’s Center of Excellence instance. Companies publish once and sites download, so a standard built in one place reaches every site. Enterprise Library launches later this year.

  • OpsMoto. One year in, OpsMoto now gives enterprise teams full visibility across all their sites. A new AI chat interface lets users ask questions about operational data in natural language — automatically building the queries and datasets needed for faster decisions.

“Manufacturers don’t need more tools; they need ways to move faster without sacrificing governance. Our focus this year is giving people AI grounded in their factory’s real-world context, so engineers decide, agents draft, and the work stays auditable as it scales,” said Mason Glidden, Chief Product and Engineering Officer at Tulip.

Services & Expertise: Frontline Deployed Engineers & Validation Accelerator

Tulip is launching two services that put its own engineers and quality experts inside customer operations, alongside new Library Resources for teams that want to jumpstart system design.

  • Frontline Deployed Engineers (FDEs). Tulip engineers embed with a customer’s operations team to deliver working systems on the plant floor. FDEs build alongside site staff so local engineers understand, own, and adapt the software after deployment. Tulip has FDEs deployed across customer sites globally.

  • Validation Accelerator Services. Tulip’s Validation Accelerator service helps life sciences companies simplify, scale, and accelerate GxP validation across their operations. Tulip Validation experts evaluate existing SOPs to deliver customized validation plans, practical applications or agent artifacts, and actionable risk-management strategies. The offering bridges modern digital workflows with strict regulatory standards for faster, compliant deployment.

  • AI Adoption Workshops. On-site, hands-on sessions where Tulip experts work directly alongside customer engineers inside their own Tulip instance to build production-ready agents. Following prerequisite training through Tulip University, participants bring quantified shop-floor challenges; such as defect review, shift handoffs, quality data analysis, and launch-readiness checks– to build, test, and deploy auditable AI agents with human oversight built in from day one.

  • Tulip Federal. Tulip Federal, a practice dedicated to manufacturers in America’s defense industrial base and to federal production and sustainment operations. Tulip Federal helps primes, suppliers, and government sites digitize assembly, inspection, quality, and maintenance work on the frontline, then roll what works out across programs and sites.

  • Tulip Library is now inside the product. Teams can build faster by starting from pre-configured templates, AI Agents, or even Projects built for quality, assembly, and compliance workflows. Customers begin with a setup tailored to a real production line, adapt it to their site, and maintain central governance as they scale.

Built around the people who run the floor

“AI has one job, to unlock human potential,” Natan Linder told the Operations Calling keynote audience, and the customers who followed him made the same case from the floor. In regulated and craft-driven operations, the quality of the work still depends on what people know, and the strongest results come when the technology is built around them.

Sarath Krishnaswamy, former VP of Operational Technology, Smith & Nephew, who delivered the customer keynote, described what it took for his teams to win: “When we were winning, it was because we were elevating people. Even the AI tools were just tools. People were a source of wisdom, they were the amplifiers, without [them], this would have been a complete disaster.” He was equally direct about what AI depends on: “…if you don’t have fundamental intelligence about what your operation is doing, you need to have wisdom, and wisdom comes from people. Unless you have that wisdom and a way for that wisdom to come out, the AI tools aren’t going to do anything.”

At Tiffany & Co., where jewelry is made by hand by artisans who once took years to train, Steve Saulen, Director of Manufacturing, described the workforce at one of its facilities and what AI now does for the people who supervise it: “We have over 500 skilled artisans at our closest facility… with anywhere from several months of experience up to forty years. Not long ago, we weren’t even using AI, and now we have … a production analyzer agent where the frontline supervisors can actually ask, ‘Who is my most proficient artisan at this product? If I had a rush order that was due in 24, 48 hours, who should I give it to? Who needs retraining?’” Saulen described how agents are also being used for predictive analysis, “It will also then tell you, ‘Here’s my recommended training plan. Here’s what you need to look into. Here’s some additional insight into your operation.'”

Key Announcement Highlights:

  • Tulip’s Frontline Operations platform now lets manufacturers build apps, agents, and automations with any tool or AI, and run all of it on one governed operational record.

  • Projects gives engineers one canvas for an entire production system. The Authoring Agent drafts the apps inside it with that full context, asking the questions an engineer would ask before it builds. (in customer testing)

  • Code based apps lets developers build frontline apps in standard code with their own IDEs and AI coding agents, and Tulip carries each Git pull request to the floor as a frozen, audited version. (in preview mode).

  • Tulip Library is now inside the product, so teams can start from templates, AI agents, or full Projects built for quality, assembly, and compliance workflows, and adapt them to their site.

  • Industrial Connectivity, Tulip’s DataOps layer, ties machine data to the order, step, station, and operator, capturing what people decided and why. (in preview mode)

  • Factory Playback gives factories eyes and the ability to act on what they see. New human activity detection shows where time goes, whether a procedure was followed, and whether a part was assembled to spec.

  • Composable AI Agents, introduced at Operations Calling 2025, now reach more floor operations, with a preserved operational record for human-in-the-loop quality assurance.

  • Native MCP Connectors let external AI tools and Tulip agents work with each other in both directions, under Tulip’s permissions and audit trail. (in preview mode)

  • Enterprise Library lets companies publish a standard once for every site to download, and OpsMoto adds an AI chat for asking questions across sites in plain language. (Enterprise Library ships later this year.)

  • Tulip Federal is a new practice for manufacturers in America’s defense industrial base and for federal production and sustainment operations.

  • Frontline Deployed Engineers embed with customer operations teams, and the Validation Accelerator takes life sciences companies from existing SOPs to validated deployments. (available now).

  • AI Adoption Workshops deliver hands-on, on-site guidance to help customer teams build, test, and deploy auditable AI agents for real shop-floor processes under human oversight.

Groundbreaker Awards

On October 5, Tulip honored this year’s 17 Groundbreaker Award winners, recognized for the impact they have made with Tulip:

  • Golden Shovel (individual builders): Mollie Serbin, Haemonetics; Louisa Stegman, Avantor Fluid Handling; Scott Hamilton Jr, Molex; Ruairi McMahon, an Irish aerospace manufacturer; Nathan Gillespie, Jazz Pharmaceuticals; and Jacek Kos, HIAB.

  • Greenhouse (teams, sites, and companies): Tiffany & Co., Amazon Robotics, Ceva, PL Developments, and Richemont.

  • AI Cultivator (new this year, championing AI across an organization): Tiffany & Co.’s Tulip AI Agents Working Group and Eric Gruber of VEKA.

  • Trellis (partners who support customer journeys): PwC, FrontWell Solutions, Factorytalk, and Percalle Group.

About Operations Calling 2026

Operations Calling 2026, the fourth annual edition of Tulip’s flagship event, takes place October 6 to 7 at Tulip HQ and The Row Hotel in Somerville, with more than 700 operations leaders, builders, and ecosystem partners, with PWC as title sponsor. Natan Linder opened the program with the keynote, followed by a customer keynote from Sarath Krishnaswamy, Former Vice President, Operational Technology at Smith+Nephew, on AI readiness in regulated operations. Speakers also include Les Karpas, Inception Global Head of Physical AI at NVIDIA; Eric Paley, Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Development; Dr. Anthony Vetro, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories; Dr. Bryan Bell, Partner at PwC; and customers and partners including Avantor, Tiffany & Co, Roche, WHOOP, Boston Dynamics, and VEKA.

“Manufacturers are asking how to adopt AI without waiting years or losing control. PwC brings the strategy, change management, and global delivery experience to help our customers do that at scale. Having them as title sponsor of Operations Calling shows how much the ecosystem around Tulip has grown,” said Stephanie Ruiz, Tulip Head of Ecosystem.

“Many manufacturers have strong AI pilots but struggle to carry them into daily operations. Tulip’s composable platform gives frontline teams a practical way to put AI to work, and our role is to help organizations align strategy, systems, and people so the results last. Operations Calling is where those conversations happen,” said Dr. Bryan Bell, Partner, PwC.

On October 5, Tulip hosted its first-ever Partner Day. The expanded Partner Pavilion brings together more than 25 technology and ecosystem partners, including a McKinsey Lemonade Factory and an MIT startup area, and PwC is showing a closed-loop operator demo built on Tulip. More than 35 demo stations show Tulip in action, from aerospace and defense assembly to agent-to-agent workflows. The conversation continues at Operations Calling Europe, November 3 to 4 in Lyon, France. For more information, visit Operations Calling (https://www.operationscalling.com/).

About Tulip

Tulip is the Frontline Operations Platform. Manufacturers in regulated and complex industries use Tulip to build apps, agents, and automations in no-code, with AI, or in code, and to run them on one governed, composable platform with end-to-end traceability and the full context of the operation. A spinoff from MIT, Tulip is headquartered in Somerville, MA, with offices in Germany, Hungary, Singapore, Israel, and Japan.

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