I know about MDT, WDS
The way I do it is I create a super generalized image via NTLite and powershell scripts and I deploy it on the system. I do have to create a user account manually in the middle of the process, tho, and wait for the scripts to run post-install upon first logon
Can it be more automated than this? How do companies do it?
Are you talking about bare metal or virtual machines?
Bare Metal I used Microsoft SCCM. It’s a pain to manage but when it works right you can easily use Task Sequences to deploy images with PXE boot.
I also had a previous install of Dell Open Enterprise Manager.
VMs, anything like Terraform and Ansible will work to deploy an image.