A company purchases electronic components and then assembles them to produce customer-specified code reader. Recently, the company has been tracking complaints about the product and found that the majority of complaints are in three key areas: faulty interface connectors, incomplete or failed code recognition from scans, and insufficient power in battery-operated mode. Since the components that contribute to these problems all come from different suppliers, the quality manager has proposed developing a supplier certification program to replace the current low-bid purchase contract system now being used. The quality council asks the manager to provide additional information about this program. As part of supplier certification, the company should perform which of the following actions?