Kuken Industries searches 70 years of drawings in minutes

Kuken Industries, a Japanese manufacturer of air conditioning and ventilation equipment with a large share of Japan's cooling tower market, faced a challenge: engineers needed to find replacement part drawings from a 70-year archive, a process that could take half a day and required experienced colleagues' help. Kuken partnered with Recursive, a Japanese AI startup and OpenAI partner, to build a search system using OpenAI's models. The tool allows engineers to search by part number or upload an image or PDF of a drawing or parts list, and it returns possible matches. Kuken expects the tool to cut drawing search time by about 90%, enabling newer engineers to work more independently, experienced engineers to mentor more, and reducing printing costs. Kuken is also developing a tool to check partner drawings, with prototype testing showing about 90% of flagged issues were genuine discrepancies. The initiative aims to pass engineering expertise to the next generation.

(Source：OpenAI)