Door Engineering & Manufacturing

Door Engineering and Manufacturing was founded in 1966 by Otis Olson in Minneapolis to build four-fold doors for industrial buildings, and soon added aviation doors. It moved to Kasota, Minnesota, in 1979 and now operates from Mankato. An investment group bought the company from the Olson family in 2004 and renamed it Door Engineering and Manufacturing, LLC, and the site links to Senneca Companies as its family of brands. It reports nearly 10,000 door systems installed worldwide, lists NBAA among its association memberships, and also builds fire-station and commercial doors.

Its aviation line starts with the H-Series bottom-rolling door, offered with northern or southern stacking, built-in or add-on Door Driver operators and a Smart Rail configuration. It also makes a single-panel hydraulic door, tip-up doors, aperture doors with counterweighted, pressure-sensing panels that let one hangar take different aircraft, vertical-lift and craneway doors, and blast doors rated to 27 psi. A portfolio entry at Centennial Airport in Colorado shows an eight-section, bi-parting Smart Rail door for Sunborne Aviation with a 175-foot by 28-foot opening, the configuration the company says is most popular with fixed base operators.

Door Engineering sells through sales representatives and installers listed on its site and offers retrofit parts and a Smart Door technology upgrade for doors already in service, which matters for an FBO keeping an older bottom-rolling door running. It does not publish pricing. The site carries literature and architect resources for specifying a door during design, and it promotes wind- and impact-tested door systems for storm-prone sites. A Cheers to 60 Years page in its portfolio marks the company's six decades in the door business.