Pullman-based Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. is plugged into an aggressive growth strategy as it increases its lines of products and services and expands its markets, says Luis D’Acosta, SEL’s chief operations officer.

The 30-year-old company designs, manufactures, and supports products and services for power-system protection, monitoring, control, automation, and metering.

“We’re continuing to grow and improve our performance in the marketplace,” says Luis D’Acosta, SEL’s chief operating officer.

SEL has 3,600 employees worldwide, up more than 40 percent from two years ago. Nearly 2,000 employees are based at the company’s 92-acre campus on the north edge of Pullman, about 80 miles south of Spokane. The company has 190 job openings, 107 of which are for positions on its Pullman campus.

The company declines to disclose specific annual sales figures, but D’Acosta says SEL plans to double revenue every five to six years, and annual sales are expected to exceed $1 billion within its current five-year growth strategy.

Early on, SEL’s products were targeted toward electric power utilities, but not all of its customers today are energy producers. SEL has attracted customers in other industrial, commercial, and government markets, including petrochemical, pulp and paper, water and wastewater, pharmaceuticals, metals, and mining.

“We supply complete, dependable solutions for critical infrastructure,” D’Acosta says.

SEL’s Spokane-area customers include Avista Corp., Inland Power & Light Co., and Mann-Grandstaff Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Most of its products have some tie to the company’s digital protective relay, which Edmund O. Schweitzer III, SEL’s founder, president, and CEO, invented in 1982 while a graduate student at Washington State University. SEL began producing it in 1984.

The digital protective relay improved on existing power-protection technology by enabling customers to locate faults at a much lower cost than traditional electromechanical relays.

“Relays are still the biggest part of the business,” D’Acosta says. 

Today, though, the company produces entire protection systems, including controls, system automation, computers, and even focused on cyber-attack prevention. 

“We’re always developing new products,” D’Acosta says.

In the early days of the company, SEL’s first catalog consisted of a one-page flier. Today, the company’s 2014 Modern Solutions catalog is 300 glossy pages.

New items include a $3,250 rugged computer, which D’Acosta is particularly fond of. The computer has no moving parts, and is fully functional at temperatures ranging from minus 40 degrees to 170 degrees, with no need for air conditioning or ventilation. The computer is a rack-mounted component that at first glance looks like a stereo amplifier without the knobs. Inside, it has a proprietary heat-transfer system using vacuum copper pipes smaller in diameter than a standard drinking straw.

“It’s just too cool,” D’Acosta says, proudly adding, “It’s designed and manufactured here in Pullman.”

All of SEL’s products contain the company’s own technology.

“We’re a company of inventors,” D’Acosta says. “We hold a lot of patents. We don’t license technology from or to anybody.”

SEL offered an employee stock ownership plan in 1994, and the company has been entirely employee owned since 2009.

D’Acosta says employee ownership not only helps recruit and retain talent, but employees with a stake in the company are more likely to contribute technological innovation and improve production processes.

The company recently started site work for a planned two-story, 28,000-square-foot SEL Family Center at the Pullman campus. The $4 million project, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2015, will be home to Little Edisons School, which is planned to provide day care services for up to 150 children of SEL employees.

SEL also will relocate its employee health care clinic there from smaller quarters in the manufacturing building. The clinic opened last year with a nurse practitioner on staff and provides basic health care for employees and their immediate family members.

SEL is acting as its own contractor on the project, which also was designed in-house.

The company’s Pullman campus currently has 12 buildings, including its 200,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and its five-story, 90,000-square foot headquarters building. The campus also includes an 89,000-square-foot Solution Delivery Center, where customers can see their products in action prior to delivery, and a 17,000-square-foot events center for corporate and community gatherings.

The company last month dedicated its newest building, the $9 million, 100,000-square-foot Zocholl building, which is occupied by the company’s research-and-development team.

About 35 miles south of the Pullman facilities, SEL employs 230 people at a manufacturing plant in the Lewiston Business & Technology Park, in Lewiston, Idaho. The company opened the 100,000-square-foot plant there in late 2011 and currently is constructing a $10 million, 140,000-square-foot addition. The Lewiston plant manufactures relays transformers and plastics.

SEL also is expanding its 200,000-square-foot manufacturing complex in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, by 65,000 square feet. The Mexico plant assembles panels and control housings for SEL equipment and systems that are manufactured in the U.S.

Both expansion projects are scheduled to be completed this summer, providing those facilities with enough room to double their production, D’Acosta says.

The company owns another manufacturing facility in Lake Zurich, Ill., where it operates its Fault Indicator & Sensor Division. More than 100 employees work in the 42,000-square-foot Lake Zurich facility.

Worldwide, the company has sold products to clients in 144 countries. SEL has 103 offices in 22 countries, including an office in Spokane Valley, allowing some employees who live in the Spokane area to work from there at least part of the week, saving on the commute.

In international markets, SEL offices provide sales, support, and engineering services, while most research, development, and core production of relays, meters, and electronic intelligent devices is done in the U.S., D’Acosta says.

Eddie Schweitzer, business development director and son of the company’s founder, says all SEL products come with a 10-year warranty that even covers accidental damage. In its 30 years of operations, however, SEL hasn’t charged a customer for repair or replacement of a part or device.

“Customers have 100 percent incentive to return a device,” Schweitzer says. “We find out why it failed and figure how to make it more robust.”