Kuken Industries is turning decades of engineering history into searchable knowledge with AI. By using the OpenAI API, the company can search through 70 years of cooling tower drawings and help engineers quickly locate the exact documents they need for repair work.
The productivity gain is substantial: finding a relevant drawing now takes about 4.5 minutes, compared with nearly an hour before. That time savings can make a meaningful difference in maintenance situations where fast access to accurate technical information matters.
Why it matters
This is a practical example of AI helping industrial teams unlock the value of legacy archives. Instead of relying on slow manual searches or institutional memory, engineers can retrieve historical drawings more reliably and focus their time on solving real-world problems.
- Faster repairs: Engineers spend less time searching and more time acting.
- Knowledge preservation: Decades of drawings become easier for current teams to use.
- Real deployment: The impact is measured in a live engineering workflow, not just a demo.