Gilgen Door Systems

Gilgen Door Systems is a Swiss company founded in 1961 by Jakob Gilgen Senior in his parents' garage in Schwarzenburg, where it remains headquartered. It supplies drive systems and complete door and gate systems, and is represented by sales and service partners in over 70 countries with six subsidiaries and its own service centres. The company employs more than 1,300 people worldwide, including more than 600 at its Swiss headquarters, and has installed and operated more than three million doors and gates. Its offerings include sliding doors with RC2/RC3 burglar resistance, the Gilgen Connect solution for sliding doors, and platform screen doors (PSD), with PSD projects including Toulouse metro Line A and AirTrain JFK.

Gilgen Door Systems began in 1961 as a one-man business in the parents' garage of Jakob Gilgen Senior in Switzerland, where he manufactured the first automatic door operators individually and installed them for customers. On 1 March 1961, Jakob Gilgen Senior from Schwarzenburg founded the Gilgen company in his parents' garage; a former federal civil servant, he invented the drive system for infinitely variable regulation of the final speed of an automatic sliding gate (cone) and patented it the same year. In 1968 he applied for a patent for automatic systems for emptying letterboxes, and the company opened a new business area, with the construction of the first conveyor system (vertical transport of mail items) for the then PTT as an important reference. On 1 January 1973, with a workforce of 96 employees, the original sole proprietorship was transformed into Gilgen AG, and the first automatic sliding door was built. In 1979 Gilgen GmbH was founded in Darmstadt to better serve the German market, with quality drives for folding doors and large doors penetrating market niches, including hangar doors at Frankfurt Airport. In May 1981 the company inaugurated its new building in Schwarzenburg, having more than doubled turnover compared to 1973, with 265 employees. In platform screen doors, Gilgen delivered its first PSD system for Toulouse metro Line A (1991-1993), consisting of 180 automatic doorways and more than 1000m of Platform Screen Doors across all stations; the line was later extended with three extra stations in 2003 which Gilgen equipped with PSDs. From 1998-2003 Gilgen supplied Platform Screen Doors core components (OEM) for all initial 10 stations of AirTrain JFK in New York, totalling 160 doorways. In the late 1990s MTR in Hong Kong decided to deploy Platform Screen Doors on its busiest metro lines (Kwun Tong, Tsuen Wan and Island Lines) as part of the first worldwide PSD retrofit project. Today the company has a global presence with more than 1,300 employees.

Swiss quality and precise engineering focused on stability, reliability and security.

• Sliding doors RC2 / RC3

  Sliding door solutions combining elegance with security and burglar resistance.

• Gilgen Connect

  A solution for sliding doors designed to fit modern lifestyle and daily routine.

• Platform Screen Doors (PSD)

  Platform screen door systems supplied for metro projects such as Toulouse Line A and AirTrain JFK.

1. 1Gilgen Door Systems plc | Door systems, gate systems and platform screen doorsgilgendoorsystems.com
2. 2History | Gilgen Door Systemsgilgendoorsystems.com
3. 3History | Platform Screen Doors | Gilgen Door Systemsgilgendoorsystems.com
4. 4About us | Gilgen Door Systemsgilgendoorsystems.com