Kuken Industries searches 70 years of drawings in minutes

Kuken Industries, a major Japanese manufacturer of cooling towers and ventilation equipment, has digitized 70 years of engineering drawings but engineers still struggled to locate the right replacement part drawings, especially newer engineers who relied on experienced colleagues. Partnering with Japanese AI startup Recursive and using OpenAI models and API, Kuken built a search system and field app that lets engineers search by part number, upload images or PDFs, and get possible matches including similar designs. The tool is expected to cut drawing search time by about 90% over a year, reduce printing costs, and free experienced engineers to mentor newer colleagues. Newer engineers can now handle more jobs independently, and Kuken is also developing an AI tool to check partner drawings, with prototype testing showing about 90% of flagged issues were genuine discrepancies. Kuken aims to pass engineering experience to the next generation.

(Source：OpenAI)