Kuken Industries searches 70 years of drawings in minutes

Kuken Industries, a major Japanese manufacturer of air conditioning and ventilation equipment, holds a large share of Japan's cooling tower market. The company faced challenges when engineers needed to find original drawings from a 70-year archive to replace parts, as searches could take half a day and newer engineers often relied on experienced colleagues. Partnering with Japanese AI startup Recursive and using OpenAI models, Kuken developed a search system and field app that allows engineers to search by part number or by uploading images or PDFs of drawings. The app extracts part numbers and returns possible matches, including similar designs. Testing shows the tool is expected to cut drawing search time by about 90% annually, enabling engineers to spend more time on design improvements, mentoring, and independent work. Kuken is also developing an AI tool to review partner drawings, with prototype tests showing about 90% of flagged issues were genuine discrepancies. The company aims to use AI to pass engineering expertise to the next generation.

(Source：OpenAI)