Lufkin Industries: JD Edwards Implementation on Azure Cloud

About the Client

Lufkin Industries’ proud past extends back to the early 20th century, when the Lufkin Foundry first started manufacturing railroad and sawmill equipment. The company, which pioneered oilfield pumping units in the 1920s, today provides precision-engineered oilfield equipment, products, and services to a global customer base.

Focused on building the highest quality and most advanced equipment while also providing the best service in the industry, Lufkin gives its customers higher long-term value with less downtime. Headquartered in Missouri City, Texas, the 1,200-employee company has a presence in eight different countries. An independent company until GE Oil & Gas purchased it in 2013, Lufkin was acquired by KPS Capital Partners, LP in 2020.

Challenges the Client Faced

At that point, Lufkin was carved out as a separate entity, which left the company without any systems, IT infrastructure, or IT department. “We had to stand up a nearly 120-year-old company with a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, help desk, office, and myriad other systems,” said Patrick Seals, CIO, who joined the company in 2020. “It was
a brand-new company being built from scratch, and it just happened to be over 100 years old.”

GSI's Solution

Tasked with providing the technical support for Lufkin’s new JD Edwards implementation, GSI performed a net-new ERP installation on a hosted Azure Cloud environment. A large global consultancy provided overall project management as well as functional consulting.

Seals said KPS wanted a cloud-based solution that didn’t require any data centers. “We looked to providers who could stand up a JDE environment for us in pretty short order,” he said. “We signed the deal and stood up the environment last year and then went live on JDE in July of this year; it was an extremely quick go-live.”

But just because the process was fast doesn’t mean it didn’t come without challenges. According to Seals, Lufkin had “zero IT people” on staff and was moving from a highly customized SAP environment. “No one on staff knew anything about the legacy systems or JDE, which was completely new to everyone at Lufkin,” Seals recalled. “We were working with outsourced resources from both onshore and offshore companies, so it was very chaotic.”