Companies have attempted to counter the competitive forces of the current market by downsizing their work forces in an effort to refocus on their core competencies. Organizational efforts to focus on core competencies and outsource often result in increased dependence on their supplier's performance. It magnifies the need for buying firms to effectively manage and develop suppliers. Since the quality of the final product is a function of its components quality, the supplier development efforts could result in the buying firm performance improvement and its competitive advantage. In addition, supplier improvement requires dedication of the buying firm's resources. So, there is a decision making problem to invest these resources efficiently to suppliers according to their strategic importance and effect on final product. This investment should by itself be justifiable for the buying firm. Optimizing this assignation has a main effect on the long-term success of the organization. Determining the eligibility and importance of suppliers to buying firm is as important here to consider as the analysis of current status. In this research, a model is proposed that includes three parts: 1) determining the eligibility and importance of suppliers to buying firm, 2) analysis of the gap of their current and desired statuses and 3) developing the road-map to fill the gap. In the model the suppliers are clustered by their importance and risk criteria, customer requirements for each cluster are specified and the current situation of supplier is analyzed. Key Words Supplier development, Supplier Clustering, SOM, Interaction stages, Customer specific requirements
