NFPA Board Meets; Recognizes and Seeks Additional Growth and Engagement
By Eric Lanke, NFPA President/CEO
Back in June, our then-new Board chair, Keith Simons of OEM Controls, wrote about the discussions held at the Board’s annual strategic retreat, and many of the networking and promotion forums NFPA organizes to strengthen the increasingly broad fluid power industry:
https://www.nfpa.com/news/nfpa-board-meets-reviews-and-updates-member-value-propositions
These many programs are carefully organized into NFPA’s broader Strategy Agenda, a plan that comprises the outcomes we seek to achieve for our members:
- Effective Forum: NFPA provides an effective forum where its members and OEMs network and advance our collective interests.
- Business Intelligence & Statistics: NFPA provides its members with timely and accurate business intelligence and statistics that support improved decision-making.
- Promote Fluid Power: NFPA provides opportunities and resources for its members to promote the unique strengths and inherent advantages offered by fluid power technology.
- Educated Workforce: NFPA helps increase the number of technical college and university students educated in fluid power and connects them to careers in the fluid power industry.
Now it’s February, and the NFPA Board has reconvened for its second meeting of the fiscal year in order to review our progress on those strategic initiatives and to lend extra support as needed. And three crucial topics received the overwhelming amount of attention:
- Member Recruitment and Engagement. NFPA’s membership is growing – now three years running with membership totals higher each year. The Board wants to keep that momentum growing, with specific focus on areas where the broad supply chain forum represented by the NFPA membership could use some shoring up – specifically manufacturers of hydraulic filters and pneumatic components, distributors, and members of our new Control, IoT, and Data (CID) membership category. Several key recruitment strategies, including better leverage of existing supply chain partners within our membership, were discussed. NFPA’s membership is also highly engaged in core NFPA programs, with the Board identifying our smaller manufacturer members as a target for additional engagement. We’ll be reaching out to these members and asking how to get them more engaged in NFPA programs.
- Technology Promotion. NFPA continues to increase the number of fluid power technology promotion opportunities it can offer to its membership. These currently include fluid power technology conferences at several upcoming customer market trade shows (AUTOMATE, iVT EXPO, and CONEXPO) as well as a new technology roadmapping effort focused on industrial markets and applications of fluid power. Strategies for growing the size and number of these events, and for increasing the number of OEMs participating in them received a lot of focus at the Board table.
- Workforce Development. Through the NFPA Foundation, we have successfully built a number of pathways through which members can source technical and engineering talent for their businesses. Our Fast Track Technical Colleges and Power Partner Universities are the central hubs for this activity, and the Board reviewed and made plans to continue expanding these platforms to more and more regions of the country, and their ability to connect students to job opportunities in our member companies. A central strategy in that regard is the development of fluid power-related curriculum and activities for placement within our partner schools. A plan for continuing to expand these efforts was discussed, and the initial resource allocations needed for that plan were made.
Our Board is a high-functioning group, and focused on the issues of direct importance to the membership and to the broader fluid power industry. As an NFPA member, I encourage you to get engaged in these key initiatives, as each will help you better connect across the changing supply chain and source the talent you need for continued growth and expansion. Please contact me at elanke@nfpa.com if you’d like to learn more about any of these opportunities.
The Board will be next meeting in June 2025.