The MIT Developer Revolutionizing U.S. Factory Jobs

As many Americans despair over disappearing factory jobs and fear being replaced by a machine, Natan Linder has set out to arm assembly-line workers with cutting-edge technology and help preserve the U.S. manufacturing market. He’s launched Tulip, an app that connects every element of a production line to a data collection program where it can be analyzed so crews can smarten and streamline their operation. New Balance and Merck have signed on. A byproduct, Linder hopes, is attracting a qualified younger generation to help fill 3.5 million jobs the Manufacturing Institute, a Washington-based think tank, has predicted will become available over the next decade. Linder, who arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab from Israel in 2008, cofounded 3D printing company Formlabs in Somerville before launching Tulip, the result of almost a decade of research.

What led you to create Tulip?
“I’ve been staring at people on production lines for eight years. The Internet as we know it doesn't exist today on shop floors. What you see instead is literally bicycle horns, clipboards, old Compaq computers, calculators and stopwatches. On the one hand, the machines have a very long life and are well maintained. But the manufacturing interface sucks and it’s hard to analyze and it's biased. If this is how you collect data and share it, then you're not living in modern America.”

What does Tulip want to do?
“It gives operators, engineers and management a platform to quickly write applications for their shop floor without writing code. It can help train and collect data on how a quality assurance process is going on the floor and increase productivity. It gathers objective information about what people do on the line. You can hear conversations, 'Well, we did okay. We had a problem here and there.' But what does it mean? With our app, those things are measured. Algorithms collect all the clicks and analyze them and you can see the cause and effect of your decisions.”

How do factory workers react when you hand them Tulip?
“We get a lot of, 'I was waiting for a long time for this' or 'This is obvious.' We also get skepticism because change is hard. We work to help companies transform. There is a lot of talk about digital transformation but much of it has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with the people.”

What's the benefit for workers? Could this feel like Big Brother?
“I think people are basically good. They want to do a good job. This is not Big Brother. Tulip is a guidance system: your coach or trainer. In manufacturing, everything is about the cycle time. The biggest spend in manufacturing is not materials, it's people. Today, many of our customers, even if they're big Fortune 500 companies, are analog shops. This is a $100 billion market that nobody knows about and the costs are on the floor.”

So, for you, tech that supports manufacturing is an untapped industry?
“I think it's one of the last bastions of enterprise software.”

There are daily stories about AI and robots eliminating jobs. What do you say to that?
“Everybody should relax. First of all, manufacturing is what humanity does. We're the technological mammals. We're the homo fabers: we make tools and that helps us survive. We're going to continuously make technology and tools and you know what humanity does once it makes the tools? They make a lot of them. It’s called mass production. We're going to have to find ways to do this smartly, efficiently — while not killing the planet. Manufacturing is changing because of technology. Supply chains have become shorter, more compressed and we are in this era of ‘lean manufacturing’ where everything is built to order. It’s all about customization. It could be your Mac, your car, your home, or the sneaker you're wearing and because of that you have to manufacture more things locally. Certain products are never going to be made outside of the US because of regulation compliance: pharmaceuticals; weapons, to a degree; automotive components; aerospace defense.”

Tulip's manufacturing app in use by an operator and his supervisor on a factory shop floor, powered by Tulip's Gateway (in background) which connects all the tools and machines to the Tulip platform. Photo courtesy of Tulip Interfaces, Inc.

How will AI change things? And what’s next?
“There are more examples of technology doing better for society than not. I'm excited about the notion of ‘gamifying’ the production job. Turning work into a game is a huge thing. One thing people may not realize is that there are jobs open in the United States in manufacturing. What we are missing are trained people who can use computers.”

What happens to humans in all of this change?
“People are effectively the smartest computer you have on your line. Humans are not as good at remembering and retrieving data, but humans are very good at making decisions. With the right data, they're pretty okay at judging the situation and making a call. It's going to be a person who saves you from producing a bunch of bad things, not a robot. Eventually, when the robots take over, the economics of the industry are going to put the brains of humans onto other tasks that are of higher value. It's hard for us to imagine what they are today.”

Give us an example?
“This is my mentor Rodney Brooks of Rethink Robotics’s example: If today you see a bunch of people digging a tunnel or laying railroad tracks, you'd think, 'This is terrible. this is like slave labor. We have machines that do that.' Humanity adopts these technologies and never looks back. In the case of digging the tunnel, you don't necessarily call it a robot today. You call it a machine but it's the same thing. It’s harnessing mechanical power to put a hole in the ground. It will usher new types of products and new collaborations between companies that you don't really think about right now. I think that's pretty exciting.”

Why do you build your companies in Somerville?
“You mean 'Camberville'? The border of Cambridge and Somerville? I like the grittiness but I don’t think it will stay that way. This used to be a manufacturing area so there is legacy. [Union Glass Company manufactured in Somerville in the 1850s that later led to Corning Glass.] It's close to MIT and people like to bike and walk to their jobs. MIT is a place where we solve hard problems. This is not the Silicon Valley. People here are grounded differently and their mindset and the tech scene are different.”

How so?
“I think it's more humble. It's more down to earth. It's more human. I think it also has to do with how old this place is compared to the rest of the US. This is a highly intellectual environment. And in winter, there is nothing else to do but work hard.”

Natan Linder with his dog, Charlie, inside the Tulip offices headquartered in a Somerville warehouse. Photo by Grace Gulick/The Editorial.

Heidi Legg is founder of TheEditorial.com which publishes interviews on emerging ideas around us.