Governance Is a Foundational Design Decision
How composability and structured governance transform industrial platforms at scale
Thierry Durand is CTO & Tulip BU Director at Percall Group.
« Every industrial digitalization project, I have been part of, has confirmed the same thing: there is the technology, and there is the methodology that makes it work at scale. Both matter. But it is the methodology, how you govern, how you scale, how you adapt; that determines whether a deployment becomes a platform or remains a pilot. Governance and composability are at the heart of that methodology. »
WHAT IS GOVERNANCE - AND WHY DOES IT MATTER ON THE SHOP FLOOR?
Industrial platform governance is the set of structural rules, data models, and decision mechanisms that allow local digital innovation to scale safely across multiple sites. It is a word that sounds abstract – until you see what happens without it.
In simple terms, it defines who is responsible for what, who can build what, how it is built, and how it connects to everything else. It is the set of rules, standards and decision paths that allow multiple teams across multiple sites to innovate independently – without creating chaos for each other and building a global and optimized core model.
Every successful Tulip deployment starts the same way: one use case, one team, one production area. The challenge begins when it works – and the organization wants more. That is the moment when governance stops being an optional consideration and becomes the difference between a scalable platform and an expensive collection of disconnected tools.
Governance becomes critical when organizations move from single-site pilots to multi-site industrial platforms with autonomous local teams.
« Governance is what transforms Tulip from a collection of local apps into a true industrial platform. Robust at the core. Agile at the edges. Scalable by design. »
WHAT DOES GOVERNANCE ACTUALLY PROVIDE?
Most organizations misunderstand governance as a control mechanism. It is the opposite – it is an enabler.
A well-defined governance approach structures four dimensions simultaneously.
• The first is the core, a validated data model, shared development standards, and common practices that guarantee consistency across every site.
• The second is contextualization, clear guardrails that give local teams the freedom to adapt and build within the global model without breaking it.
• The third is quality over time, application lifecycle management that ensures the platform remains maintainable as it grows.
• The fourth is alignment, connecting every local initiative to the organization’s strategic direction.
What changes for the people on the floor: an operator who has an idea for improving their workflow has a clear path to build it, test it, and share it – without waiting months for an IT project. A team leader in Site B can adopt an application that Site A validated last month.
A plant director can see consistent data across all sites without reconciling incompatible systems.
« The starting point is always the same: one site that works, one data model worth replicating, and one local team ready to share what they have learned. Governance begins there, not in a planning document. »
HOW DOES COMPOSABILITY MAKE GOVERNANCE NECESSARY?
Composability is the foundation on which governance operates.
In a composable approach, every new use case is an independent piece – a production supervision application, a quality control workflow, a preventive maintenance module – each built for a specific operational need, validated locally, then integrated into the broader platform. The key principle: never start from scratch. What works on one site is deployed within days.
This speed creates the governance requirement. When local teams can build fast – and they should – the platform needs a structure that captures local innovations, evaluates them against global standards, and integrates the best into the shared core. Without governance, composability produces fragmentation. With it, composability produces scales.
« A well-defined governance model does not slow down local innovation. It gives local innovation a path to becoming global value. »
WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE?
When a multi-site organization adopts this model, three streams run in parallel: governance maintains the global platform roadmap and integrates field innovations through a Center of Excellence (COE); transformation delivers new use cases in structured lots and integrates Tulip with ERP, PLM and CMMS systems; performance runs small local teams iterating rapidly on specific use cases, generating measurable results quickly.
The COE is not a committee that slows things down. It is the mechanism through which a local team breakthrough becomes available to every other site on the platform.
In one recent deployment in the service industry, Percall Group delivered a fully operational Tulip solution on a production line – from process mapping to confirmed operational results – in three months.
Governance is not static. It is a living system – one that continuously integrates local successes into the global core and aligns platform evolution with strategic objectives.
« The governed composable platform we build today is designed to integrate tomorrow’s innovations – whether they come from a local team on the shop floor or from the next generation of AI-assisted tools. »