Seal vs Tulip

1Tulip and Seal, side by side.

Tulip and Seal are both configurable platforms, and both can run guided, signed manufacturing work. They differ in what you configure. Tulip is a platform for building your own frontline apps, automations and agents on tables and connectors, used across many industries; Tulip calls a system assembled this way a composable MES.¹² Seal is the GxP operating system for biopharma: lab, manufacturing and quality workflows on one platform, built on a shared ontology that already defines how a batch, a sample, a result and an investigation relate.

2What Tulip is built for.

Tulip is built for manufacturers that want their own engineers and operations teams to build the software the shop floor uses, and to keep changing it. Tulip Interfaces, Inc. was founded in 2014 by Natan Linder and Rony Kubat as a spinoff of the MIT Media Lab, and is based in Somerville, Massachusetts. It describes itself as a frontline operations platform and composable MES, serving pharmaceutical, medical device, aerospace and defence and discrete manufacturers, and names AstraZeneca and Tiffany & Co. among its customers.¹

In Tulip, you build:²³

• Apps with steps, triggers and widgets in a no-code editor, with custom widgets in HTML, JavaScript and CSS where needed.
• Tables that hold the data the apps create and update, which external systems can read and write through the Tulip API.
• Connectors to other systems over HTTP, SQL and MQTT, alongside devices such as scales, scanners, label printers and cameras.
• Automations and AI agents that run on schedules and events.

For life sciences, Tulip’s electronic batch record apps guide operators step by step, check entries against limits and can stop a process on an out-of-range value; they pull work orders and recipes from ERP and push completed batch data back, and in-spec batches are flagged ready so that quality teams review the deviations.⁴ Tulip states alignment with 21 CFR Part 11 and EU Annex 11, and says the platform ships pre-qualified so that validation can focus on the apps a team builds.⁴⁵ Its examples include NextPharma, which moved weigh and dispense, blending and packaging from paper to Tulip in nine months.⁴

Tulip’s AI turns SOPs, documents and videos into draft apps, translates apps, answers operators from manuals and system data, and runs configurable agents with a human in the loop; it uses models through Azure OpenAI or AWS Bedrock and can be switched off in account settings.⁶²

Tulip is therefore an application platform rather than a classic pharma MES. A Tulip batch record is the set of apps and tables a team builds or adapts from Tulip’s library, and Tulip contrasts this composable approach with monolithic MES implementations that make the operation conform to the software. It suggests starting with one application, such as weigh and dispense or equipment logbooks, validating it, then expanding to full electronic batch records.⁴²

3Apps and tables, or a GxP record model.

Both platforms keep data from the work. The difference is who defines what that data means.

In Tulip, the builder designs the tables and decides what each app writes to them; table records are created from the table interface or by an app trigger.³ Tulip offers AI agents that explain the purpose and relationships of an app’s tables and suggest improvements to its data model.⁷ Table rows hold the values the apps write. Seal’s Tulip connection notes that they do not include app completions, signatures or audit trails, so a status column is not evidence that an app step was completed or signed.

In Seal, the record types and their relationships come from the shared ontology: a sample belongs to a batch, a result comes from a test, and an investigation links to the affected work. Raw-material lots, intermediates and finished units link to the operations that use or produce them, so a trace runs both ways. In the example in Seal’s MES blueprint, material lot RM-208 traces through batch B-041 to finished lot FP-041, with the equipment, operators and test results along the way. Ask Neil “Which batches used material lot RM-208?” and it follows the accessible manufacturing, laboratory and quality records and answers with sources your team can inspect. Each record keeps its history, and every run keeps the process version it used.

4How a change reaches the line.

Both platforms control what reaches production. In Tulip the controlled unit is the app version; in Seal it is the process version, carrying its requirements and test evidence.

In Tulip, a new app version needs electronic sign-off from designated approvers before it is published to a production station, and a comparison view shows what changed between versions, including steps, widgets, triggers and variables. Workspaces separate sites, lines or departments, each with its own apps, data and permissions.⁴⁷ Teams use separate development, validation and production environments and validate each app by intended use and risk, in line with FDA’s Computer Software Assurance guidance, so process engineers can make low-risk updates without revalidating the platform. One of Tulip’s agents generates a GxP validation guide for an app.⁴⁷

In Seal, a changeset carries the configuration, its specifications and its verification. The URS, FS, DS and configuration specification stay linked to the released version. When the changeset is prepared for review, its selected acceptance tests run, and publication requires current passing results; failures, corrections and retests stay with the candidate revision. Open runs keep the approved version they started on, the next batch runs the new one, and the effectiveness of a corrective change is measured on the runs that follow. When the change comes from a deviation, the changeset stays linked to it, as Seal’s change control blueprint shows.

5Where Tulip is the better fit.

Tulip is the better fit when you want a platform for frontline apps across many kinds of operation, built and changed by your own teams.

• You run regulated and non-regulated operations, such as medical devices, aerospace or discrete assembly alongside pharma, and want one platform for all of them.¹
• Your process engineers want to build and change apps themselves, with reusable templates and the Tulip Library to start from.²
• You need machine and device connectivity at the line, with hundreds of pre-built connectors and drivers, edge devices, pick-to-light and computer vision.⁸²
• Your priority is operator guidance at the line: step-by-step instructions, error-proofing and one-click translation of apps.²
• You want vendor engineers to build a first solution with you, from a one-week Jumpstart to a six-week Proof of Value.⁸
• You already run a LIMS and a QMS and want an execution layer that connects to them with clear system-of-record boundaries.⁴

6Where Seal is the better fit.

Seal is the better fit when the shop floor, the laboratory and quality should share one GxP record model rather than one you design.

• Manufacturing execution, laboratory, quality, training and inventory share one platform and one ontology, so a result, deviation or material lot links to the step it concerns.
• Each improvement becomes a new process version with its specifications, test evidence and approvals, and earlier runs keep the version they used.
• Neil configures the process from your procedure or master batch record, investigates across runs and prepares changes with their tests. In line with the EU’s draft GMP Annex 22 on AI, Neil is not used in GMP execution. It helps set up configuration, which your team verifies and releases under change control.
• You want a corrective action to become a verified change to the process, measured on the runs that follow.

7Running Seal alongside Tulip.

Seal has a Tulip connection with a narrow scope. It reads selected rows from one Tulip table so that Neil can use them in production and quality reviews.

Seal’s Tulip connector reads one table with an API token scoped to tables:read, and it does not write to Tulip. The connection is restricted to one workspace and table and captures each row’s record ID, sequence number, creation and update timestamps, and visible supported columns with their names and types. Hidden columns, images and files, user, machine and station details, and linked-table contents are not included. Set-up takes three steps: create a tables:read token in the intended Tulip workspace, enter the table URL and credentials in Seal’s integration settings, then search record IDs, select rows and choose the Seal groups that can see them.

Once connected, Neil can:

• compare selected table rows with the quality event and batch records under review;
• summarise the exceptions and open items in the selected rows for a shift handover;
• compare quantities in the rows with a batch’s expected values.

Table snapshots exclude app completions, signatures and audit trails, so they should not stand in for an electronic batch record or a signed batch-release package. For anything wider, Seal’s REST API and Scripts can build a scoped connection.

8Moving from Tulip to Seal.

Move one process first, and keep Tulip running the apps you have not moved.

1. Choose a process where the batch record, laboratory results and quality events need to sit together, such as a release test or a batch with recurring deviations.
2. Bring the procedure or master batch record, the Tulip apps and tables that run it today, a representative batch and the records it touches. Use sample material, or arrange an NDA before sharing confidential records.
3. Neil proposes the steps, fields, calculations, material and equipment requirements and review gates. Your process experts check the mapping. Once the scope is agreed and the inputs received, Seal prepares the first working configuration and its validation pack within 48 hours.
4. Connect the Tulip tables the process still needs, read-only, and agree which system is the source of record for each.
5. Agree which records move and which stay retrievable in Tulip, and reconcile representative records before you rely on the new workflow.

Production timing then depends on scope, interfaces, migration, operational readiness and your release requirements. The electronic batch records blueprint describes how Seal executes and reviews a batch.