Leading EV Aircraft Manufacturer

An eVTOL startup scaling production of complex electric autonomous aircraft faced a fundamental tension between rapid design iteration and manufacturing execution. Each aircraft requires hundreds of precise assembly steps and thousands of components, many of which undergo frequent revision changes as engineering refines the design. Paper-based work instructions could not keep pace — when engineering released a change order, updated documents had to be physically redistributed to each station, creating a window where technicians might assemble aircraft against outdated specifications. Tracking which revision of a part was actually installed required manual reconciliation, complicating the As-Built Bill of Materials critical for Flight Operations teams managing spares globally. The result was a 10-day final assembly cycle and engineering change rollouts measured in days rather than hours.

The manufacturer implemented Tulip's composable MES, deploying a suite of no-code apps across assembly stations that digitized every step of the production workflow. Connected digital work instructions replaced paper travelers, guiding technicians through multi-stage assembly with embedded quality checks and serial number capture at each step. When engineering pushes a part revision, the updated specification propagates instantly to floor tablets — technicians see the current revision without any manual redistribution cycle. The platform tracks part-level traceability across three production stages and hundreds of steps, automatically generating an accurate As-Built BOM at completion. A custom inventory management app was layered in to flag low stock and manage revision-level kitting, and the system established structured handling rules for non-conforming or soon-to-be-obsolete parts under each engineering change order.

Deploying Tulip's platform drove measurable improvements across the assembly operation:

• 75% reduction in engineering change rollout time — updates that previously required manual document redistribution now reach the floor instantly
• 80% reduction in final assembly build time — cycle time dropped from 10 days to 2 days
• Real-time production visibility across all work orders enabled production managers to accurately forecast plane delivery timelines without manual status tracking

Beyond cycle time, the team gained end-to-end traceability for every aircraft, with As-Built BOMs documenting the exact revision level of critical components — a requirement Flight Operations teams rely on to maintain correct spares kits for globally deployed aircraft.

• Digitize the engineering change pathway first. In aerospace, the cost of assembling against a superseded revision far exceeds the cost of digitization — this is where ROI accrues fastest.
• Traceability and speed are complementary, not competing. Capturing serial numbers and revision levels at each step did not slow technicians; structured apps enforced it without adding friction.
• Composable platforms suit rapid-iteration environments. A no-code MES allowed the team to update workflows as the aircraft design evolved, without waiting on IT or vendor development cycles.
• As-Built BOM accuracy has downstream value. Linking production data to Flight Operations' spares management extended the ROI of the investment well beyond the factory floor.