Episode 47: An Interview With Vince Noonan, President, NASF Foundation

Recently, Products Finishing attended the SUR/FIN 2024 surface finishing industry trade show, an annual event hosted by the National Association for Surface Finishing (NASF, Washington, D.C.). This year at the show, the NASF announced a rebranding aimed at unifying various aspects of the organization, including its educational foundation, as well as its various chapters. In this installment of On the Line, PF speaks with Vince Noonan, president of the NASF Foundation, president of the Metal Finishers Association of Southern California (MFASC) and vice president of strategic operations at Sheffield Platers (San Diego, Calif.) about some of these changes and what they mean for the finishing industry.

Read a excerpt from PF's interview with Vince Noonan: 

PF: The NASF recently unveiled its new brand identity — can you talk about the significance of this rebrand and what it means for the industry?

VN: Being part of the NASF means you’re part of a community — and it’s not just SUR/FIN; it’s the chapters, it’s the access to the education. This is something I’m going to repeat over and over again — we are one. We are the chapters. We are NASF and we are the foundation. Together, we can be stronger — when we’re united and we’re bringing best practices to everyone. In the past, we’ve always been, for example, the MFASC or the Chicago Midwest chapter. But, if we all become NASF chapters, we become a larger, united front. 

PF: How does the rebranding of NASF help to forward this cause?

VN: We’re dedicated to excellence in the surfacing finishing industry. There are a lot of veterans in the industry and a lot of newcomers — we needed something that would make an impact. And one of the ways you can do that is with a rebrand because it also shows the veterans we’re continuing to grow. It also shows the newcomers that we’re not afraid to honor our history, but also move things forward in a way that’s going to tie in with the way the world works today. That means social media; that means having your brand out there in a stronger way; that means bringing all of those different groups [chapters] together.

Our goal as a board is to push things forward in our industry. With the amount of regulation that we have; with the challenges of workforce and with the challenges of education — we needed this rebrand to show that we’re going to continue to push and fight for the industry.

PF: Can you talk about what the NASF is trying to do with its educational initiatives?

VN: We want to be able to bring engineers [out of school] and hire them into these companies, but we also need our own educational initiatives that will allow people who start on the ground floor position to learn and grow — not only in the industry but at the work they are at now.

What we’ve done with education allows you to attend courses at SUR/FIN, you can attend courses with a professor online or you can do them self-paced at your job. The biggest key — and the biggest change that we’ve made over the last 10-15 years — is that access to the education.

So, one of the first things we did was we came up with the Catalyst eLearning Center, where you have access to technical courses, including Plating 101, math and chemistry refresher courses and all of the information needed to prepare for CAF, CEF or MSF courses. We’re not going to make them easier, but we’re going to make sure that you’re prepared — that when you walk into that course you have every bit of information you need.

These are the kinds of things NASF is doing for you as a member. We want to ensure that when a company pays to take these courses, your employee is prepared to take it, pass it and use that information to make your company better. The goal is to make your company better, in turn making the industry better.

PF: When you’re looking at the newcomers who are coming — not just to finishing, but the manufacturing industries — what do you want them to understand about surface finishing and its place within the whole of manufacturing?

VN: This is what I want people to understand about surface finishing. It’s on everything that you touch — almost everything in your daily life involves something that involves surface finishing. Whether it’s powder coating or the chrome on a belt buckle or a bumper. What people may not know is that when a rocket ship goes up to the moon, a lot of those parts have electroless nickel on them to make sure that the fuel they use won’t cause corrosion or some other problem with that rocket. They need to know that on the Mars Rover, there are reflectors that are plated in gold that enable its communication with NASA. It’s important to know that surface finishing is not just one area that you hear about on the news. It’s everything. It’s all encompassing.

What’s most important is that people need to know that even if you come in at a starting position, with a little bit of tenacity, you can move up to that next level or the level above that, by getting the education and by understanding what surface finishing does.

PF: Can you talk about the collaboration with OEMs and suppliers, and what they need to understand about working with finishers.

VN: A few months ago, I spoke to a graduating group of engineers. I told them that as an engineer, you may not know it yet, but you’re going to design a part someday — possibly to go on a spaceship, for example  — and when you design that part, you have to understand that if a surface finisher comes in to put a coating on that part, to make it last longer, be better be stronger, you’re gonna have to understand how that solution might go into a blind hole, or how masking of a part is going to have a great effect on how that part performs when it’s put together. The collaboration has become more about getting ground floor engineers — design engineers — to understand that, if a coating is going to be applied, the design phase of a part is when we need to work together.

One thing we’ve done out here at Sheffield is we’ve been able to get ahead of the curve by going to the design engineer at one of these OEMs and say, “We know that you’re going to put electroless nickel on this part — if you have these holes that are going to be plated, we need X, Y and Z to ensure that the coating we provide you will do what you think it needs to do.” And that collaboration has been huge. Because then the more upfront collaboration we get, it’s going to be better.

PF: So what’s next on the horizon? Can you talk about NASF goals for the future based on this work we’ve been talking about?

VN: There was a lot of work behind the scenes for the last three years to get to this point where we’re at today — the release of the catalyst, the rebranding of the AESF to the NASF foundation. Our next goal is a two-year strategic plan, which we'll be working on over the next three months.

Also, I want to make sure that for our current members, if you’ve been out of the loop and are not as engaged, come back and see what the NASF is about. We are not the same NASF that we were even five years ago. For those who have yet to join the NASF, look at the benefits we’re going to have for future members.

The other thing that I think is very important is we want to reach out beyond metal finishing. This is surface finishing — this is powder coating, magnetizing. This is all encompassing for the companies that do anything besides dipping something in a tank to put metal on metal. That’s one of our other goals. Moving forward, we need to do that. We are surface finishing, we are one, it’s all encompassing. Come and be part of it.