Here’s a good recipe for a home-baked business success dish.

Start with two cups of education and hard-earned expertise—say, in the field of electrical engineering—and add in a cup of pure entrepreneurial energy and a tablespoon each of business management savvy and good niche market timing.

For added flavor, and a nourishing corporate culture, sprinkle in an enticing employee stock ownership plan and a generous pinch of product warranty support.

Mix thoroughly, heat to an appropriate industrial temperature, and—voila—you have Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc., the Pullman-based company that provides an expanding range of power-related products and services.

As amply evident in a recent Journal story by reporter Mike McLean, the 30-year-old company’s strong growth has made its founder, president and CEO, Edmund O. Schweitzer III, look—to belabor the metaphor—like a master chef.

 It’s too bad SEL is located some 80 miles south of Spokane, but its steady rise and sheer size—without question—have benefited the entire Inland Northwest, and its positive impact here hopefully will continue to expand in the years to come.

The company designs, manufactures, and supports products and services for power-system protection, monitoring, control, automation, and metering. Early on, its products were targeted at electric power utilities. Since then, though, it has attracted customers in a variety of industrial, commercial, and government markets.

From modest beginnings, SEL has grown to 3,600 employees worldwide, up more than 40 percent from just two years ago. Nearly 2,000 employees are based at the company’s 92-acre campus on the north edge of Pullman. 

For comparative purposes, if located here, it would rank as Spokane County’s fifth-largest employer and its largest manufacturer by a wide margin.

It introduced an employee stock ownership plan in 1994 and has been entirely employee owned since 2009, which no doubt is alluring to many prospective job candidates.

Furthermore, its growth is showing no outward signs of weakening. Earlier this month, it had 190 job openings, 107 of which were for positions in Pullman.

SEL doesn’t divulge specific annual revenue figures, but a company executive told the Journal that it plans to double its revenue every five to six years, and expects annual sales to surpass a stunning $1 billion within its current five-year growth strategy. 

Just as impressively, Schweitzer Engineering—which its chief operating officer described in the Journal article as “a company of inventors’’—is continuing to develop new products in an effort to further bolster its market presence.

Unforeseeable market whims and industry trends aside, it seems to have assembled the ingredients needed to support long-term growth, which is good news beyond just the Palouse.