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 faced challenges in retrieving them efficiently. Engineers, especially newer ones, struggled to locate the right drawing for replacement parts, often relying on experienced colleagues. Partnering with Japanese AI startup Recursive and using OpenAI models, Kuken developed a search system that allows engineers to search by part number, drawing number, or even upload screenshots or PDFs. The tool reads part numbers and returns possible matches, including similar designs. Kuken reports that the tool is expected to cut drawing search time by about 90% annually. This efficiency frees experienced engineers to mentor others and lets newer engineers work more independently. Kuken is also prototyping an AI tool to check partner drawings, with about 90% of flagged issues being genuine discrepancies. The company aims to use AI to pass engineering skills to the next generation.

(Source：OpenAI)