The goal of Supplier Development function as part of the NPI process is to help the process of taking a potential supplier through the Supplier Development process so that they can perform well as a supplier and hopefully before a preferred supplier.
Supplier development usually translates to several activities, including training, providing engineering and quality engineering support, ensuring failures are analyzed, resolved and corrective actions/counter measures are completed properly, as well as formulating and implementing improvement projects. Supplier development needs are identified based on initial capability assessments, audit and performance assessments.