Kuken Industries searches 70 years of drawings in minutes

Kuken Industries, a major Japanese manufacturer of air conditioning and ventilation equipment, has digitized 70 years of engineering drawings. Engineers previously spent up to half a day searching for the right drawing when a cooling tower needed a replacement part. Kuken partnered with Japanese AI startup Recursive and used OpenAI models to build a search system and field app that can find drawings by part number, image, or PDF. The tool is expected to cut drawing search time by about 90%, allowing newer engineers to work more independently and experienced engineers to mentor and focus on other tasks. Kuken is also developing an AI tool to check partner drawings, with prototype testing showing about 90% of flagged issues were genuine discrepancies. The initiative helps pass engineering expertise to the next generation.

(Source：OpenAI)