Manufacturing Facility

Since 1989, KUDU has provided Progressing Cavity Pumps, Driveheads and Power Units to the oil and gas industry. KUDU’s modern manufacturing facility is located in Calgary, Alberta and utilizes the latest in fabrication technology to provide our clients a perfect fit for their operation.

KUDU’s Lloydminster shop is also a manufacturing facility, which assembles custom pumps and Power Units for heavy oil applications. Lloydminster manufacturing is scheduled for further expansion in the future to include other KUDU products.

In 1999, KUDU adopted the Toyota Model Manufacturing Principles, which doubled manufacturing capacity. This approach enables KUDU to minimize product defects and reduce waiting times. These significant advantages carry over directly to our customers by ensuring high quality, made to order products with quick turn around times. Read more below about KUDU’s going lean.

GOING LEAN – An Early Look

When Calgary based KUDU Industries introduced a more efficient oil pump into Alberta’s petroleum patch in the late 1980s, the company developed financial momentum that lasted well into the 1990s. KUDU subsequently redesigned its production strategy to keep that momentum going; the results proved to be even more successful.

KUDU Chairman and Founder Robert Mills was one of the first people in Canada to begin working with oil well Progressing Cavity Pumps (PCP). The PCP is capable of maintaining the tremendous pressure necessary to keep oil flowing, while also resisting clogging and other problems that regularly plague conventional pumping equipment. Moreover, PCP’s do the job for about one quarter of the price of the conventional equivalent and uses only half the power.

The first PCP’s in Canada went into service in 1979, pumping heavy, sand-laden oil. KUDU was founded in 1989, in order to serve a market for PCP’s in Alberta’s medium crude oil wells. Business boomed for the better part of a decade, but a collapse in the price of oil caused sales to crash in 1998. Mills turned to Chuck Harrision, a manufacturing consultant and Industrial Technology Advisor with the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP). An initiative of the National Research Council, IRAP works closely with small and medium-sized enterprises, helping them grow their businesses, increase their competitiveness and enhance their impact in the marketplace.

IRAP ushered in major changes for the way KUDU conducted business. Harrison pointed to the need for “lean manufacturing”, by maintaining a much smaller volume of ready materials and products in order to reduce overall operating costs. “We don’t stockpile inventory on the shop floor anymore,” says Mills. “We have overhead bridge cranes to move inventory as needed. Consequently we have freed up significant space. Now that we have room on the floor, instead of contracting out our machining, we purchased our own machine tools; we’ve trained people and are doing it ourselves.”

Harrison also recommended that KUDU adopt ISO9001 standards, written procedures to guarantee performance and quality of production. This dramatic restructuring also led to streamlined decision-making processes, which entailed greater participation by teams of people working closely together.

These changes have vastly improved KUDU’s prospects by increasing annual sales, enabling three acquisitions and eliminating bank debt. Perhaps most importantly, the company now conducts more R&D work in its field than any other in Canada, holding over 20 patents dealing with PCP technology.

Mills links these accomplishments directly with IRAP. “I don’t think we would be where we are today without Chuck Harrison,” he says. “His insights were invaluable and his individual effort was extraordinary. KUDU is a successful company today because Chuck showed us what lean manufacturing could do and assisted us as we transformed our business.”