NFPA Board Meets; Reviews and Updates Member Value Propositions

Reviews and Updates Member Value Propositions
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://nfpahub.com/nfpa-is-broadening-its-effective-forum-for-networking-and-promotion/

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 October, and the NFPA Board has reconvened for its first 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:

• Distributor Members. NFPA’s Distributor members represent a large majority of the fluid power distribution market, and their participation in NFPA’s core programs is essential to our overall success as an organization. The Board – with 4 of 18 seats currently held by Distributor members – carefully reviewed the key points of value distributors gain from their NFPA membership, and recognized the numerous networking advantages they have with the manufacturers, controls companies, and suppliers that make up the rest of the NFPA membership, the broad range of industry, market and technology trends presented and discussed at our various events and in our various reports, and an increasing amount of distribution-specific content and networking opportunities. A commitment was made to continue increasing the distribution-specific opportunities and to continue promoting and engaging more of our Distributor members in our core programs.

• Technology Promotion. NFPA’s Technology Task Forces are highly engaged in the tracking of machine-level technology trends that are impacting the fluid power industry, and in promoting the positive ways in which fluid power is participating in those trends through an increasing number of programs and events. The Board reviewed the increasing successes we’re having in engaging our OEM partners in these activities through the working groups of the Technology Task Forces, through our Fluid Power Forum podcast, and through targeted technology conferences, like the one most recently held at the August 2024 iVT EXPO trade show. Recognizing that much of this success emphasizes the mobile side of our industry, it was decided to re-emphasize the technologies impacting the industrial side of the industry through a new and stand-alone technology roadmapping process focused solely on industrial applications and their unique needs.

• 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 our Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, which is receiving increasing interest and demands for growth from a wider and wider base of NFPA members. A plan for continuing to expand that program with more universities and more event locations 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 February 2025 in conjunction with the NFPA Annual Conference.