Standards on Digital Product Passport

Related standards or drafts

• Digital product passport
• Product passport
• Dpp

European and foreign companies should be aware and follow the developments in the field of Digital Product Passport

The product passport is an important tool to foster the sustainability of products and the transition to sustainable business models by making information available to actors along the entire value chain.

The product passport will enhance end-to-end traceability of a product throughout its value chain, help consumers make informed choices by providing access to product information relevant to them, allow economic operators and other value chain actors such as repairers or recyclers to access relevant information, and enable competent national authorities to perform their duties.

The product passports should be as uniform as possible across products, industry sectors and relevant EU legislations, and the way they are used as consistent as possible. This can help avoid confusion and misunderstandings arising when organisations or industries use different formats or standards.

The product passports should be easily shared and used across different systems and platforms. This will facilitate information exchange between various stakeholders, such as manufacturers, suppliers, customers, and regulators.

Will rely on harmonised standards to provide a clear and consistent set of guidelines and requirements, thus reducing the time and resources required to implement and maintain the system as well as stimulate innovation and competition of market players offering product passports (services).

Harmonised European standards will improve the quality of data captured in product passports by providing explicit definitions, guidelines and validation rules. This helps ensure that the data is accurate, complete and consistent. In addition, it is expected that they will cover:

• Unique identifiers
  (a) Global uniqueness of each identifier (i.e., the same identifier can not be assigned to different products, different economic operators, or different facilities),
  (b) Syntax-related requirements,
  (c) Semantic-related requirements,
  The standards shall consider the diversity of identifiers currently used by economic operators and accommodate them as much as possible, for example, through contextual prefix (e.g., issuing agencies codes) where relevant. The standard(s) should allow both the possibility to use ‘centralised’ and ‘decentralised’ identifiers.
  The unique product identifier should always refer to a product, being it at model, batch, or item level. The maximum length of the unique product identifier string should be 70 characters.
  In order to promote interoperability, reduce costs for companies, and support coherency and consistency of digitalisation efforts, the standard(s) developed should adequately take into account typology of identifiers already used in other European legislations and initiatives.

• Standards on data carriers
  The standard(s) shall define common rules for how to construct the Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) media to be used as data carrier linked to the product passport.
  The requirements should concern, as applicable:
  (a) symbology characteristics,
  (b) data character encoding methods,
  (c) symbol formats,
  (d) dimensional characteristics,
  (e) error correction rules,
  (f) reference decoding algorithm,
  (g) printing quality requirements,
  (h) production quality requirements,
  (i) user-selectable application parameters (if relevant)

• Standards on links between physical product and digital representation, look-up mechanism
  The standard(s) shall define clear rules and requirements related to access control measures to regulate the access to restricted product passport information.

• Standards on interoperability (technical, semantic, organisation), including data exchange protocols and formats and data processing (introduction, modification, update)
  The standard(s) shall define, inter alia, rules related to:
  (a) Semantic description of a product, including but not limited to unambiguous meaning and consistent naming, where relevant a value list, a specific format and defined units of measure for all quantitative values,
  (b) a common information model allowing for the implementation of dictionary systems,
  (c) Data exchange protocols, including rules to exchange data between two or more parties,
  (d) Processes to introduce, modify, and update information in the passport,
  (e) Data models and formats to be used in exchange and representation.

• Standards on data storage and data persistence
  The standard(s) shall define rules for decentralised data storage and data persistence. Persistence is required to make sure that data included in the product passports would remain available even when the economic operator creating the passport is no longer active.

• Standards on data authentication, reliability, integrity
  The standard(s) shall provide an open and interoperable method, between automated identification services and data carriers, to read data, verify data originality and data integrity in offline and online use cases. It/They shall establish a framework for ensuring trust, interoperability and interoperation via secure and reliable electronically signed encoded data set (ESEDS) schemes for multi-actor applications in multi-sector environment.

• Standards on data security and privacy
  The standard(s) shall identify rules to guarantee IT-security and data protection. Existing relevant standards should be duly considered when drafting the new harmonised standard(s).

The information requirements set under theEcodesign Regulation should include the requirement to make a digital product passport available. The digital product passport is an important tool for making information available to actors along the entire value chain and the availability of a digital product passport is expected to significantly enhance end-to-end traceability of a product throughout its value chain. Among other things, the digital product passport is expected to help customers make informed choices by improving their access to relevant information, allow economic operators, namely manufacturers, authorised representatives, importers, distributors, dealers and fulfilment service providers, and other value chain actors, such as customers, professional repairers, independent operators, refurbishers, remanufacturers, recyclers, market surveillance and customs authorities, civil society organisations, researchers, trade unions, and the Commission, or any organisation acting on their behalf, to access, introduce or update relevant data, and enable competent national authorities to perform their duties, without endangering the protection of confidential business information. To that end, it is important that the digital product passport be user-friendly and that the data contained therein be accurate, complete and up to date. The digital product passport should, where necessary, be complemented by non-digital forms of transmitting information, such as information in the product manual or on a label. In addition, it should be possible for the digital product passport to be used for providing information concerning the relevant product group pursuant to other Union law.