Briefing a warehouse shutter

The information a supplier actually needs to quote an industrial door, and the three items usually missing from the enquiry.

An industrial shutter enquiry is usually a width, a height and a request for a price. Three items decide the quotation, and they are almost never in the enquiry.

Cycles per day. A door opened four times a day and a door opened four hundred times are different products with the same dimensions — the second needs a duty-rated operator and a maintenance interval, and pricing the first against the second is why quotations diverge.

What is on the other side of the opening. Temperature, dust, corrosive atmosphere and clean-air boundaries each change the curtain, the finish and sometimes the door type entirely.

And what has to be true in a power cut. Hand lift, chain drive, battery back-up or nothing — this decides the operator family before capacity is even calculated.

Supply the three and a quotation becomes a specification. Leave them out and it becomes a price for a door that may not suit the opening.