The Life of a SOMMER Door

Every garage door SOMMER UK makes starts as a conversation and ends as a lorry pulling onto a driveway. Between those two moments, an idea has to become a specification, a set of parts, a finished door and a delivery. That process used to live in seven spreadsheets. This is how it works now. It begins with an enquiry. A dealer or a homeowner calls in with an opening size, a location, an idea of the look they want and a budget. Those details open a live record — one record that everything downstream will read from. The conversation becomes the starting point for the whole job. Next, the door takes shape. A sales engineer picks the panel style and finish, the track type for the headroom available, the motor and controls, windows and accessories. It's about how the door looks, but also how it fits and moves. Every choice cascades — change the panel and you change the weight, and the weight changes almost everything else. The moment that's saved, the rules engine runs. Door weight and balance. Torsion spring wire gauge, coil count and cable drum. Track geometry, roller positions, safety clearances. These aren't separate decisions: the parts have to work together. Hundreds of checks that used to be a spreadsheet and a slide rule, resolved in about a second — and it refuses to let an unbuildable door through. From that comes the bill of materials. Panels, tracks, springs, cables, rollers, brackets, fixings, motor, controls — every part with a real part number, either reserved from stock or raised as a purchase order automatically. The specification becomes a practical list of what the workshop needs to build this particular door. Planning slots the job into a production day, a workstation and a lane. That's the moment the delivery promise becomes real, calculated from actual capacity rather than optimism. The job has a place in the schedule, not just a date to aim for. On the floor, the order lands as a job sheet. Panels are prepped and cut, tracks assembled, springs wound and tensioned, then paint and finish. Each step is scanned as it's completed, so the office can see exactly where a door is without walking out to ask. Progress follows the work itself. Then quality control. Dimensions against the spec. Weight and balance. Operation and safety. Finish and paperwork. The finished door is checked against the order that started it all. Only a pass leaves the bay. Compliance paperwork is generated straight from the order data — CE labels, declaration of performance, product labels, the full manufacturing pack. Nothing is retyped, so nothing drifts. The same details that guided the build now provide its documentation. The door is packed, labelled, weighed and booked onto a route. The customer gets a delivery window. The driver gets a manifest. Door, parts and paperwork are ready for the final journey. It arrives on site with every component labelled and every document in the box. Installation starts the same day. From the first opening size to the last label, the record connects the conversation to the door on the driveway. Ten stages. One record. SOMMER UK.