A product usually consists of several materials or components from different product sectors and is often created via a long value chain involving several parties. The contents of the Digital Product Passport are defined in delegated acts specific to each product group, whereby the information on components and intermediate products must also be available on the basis of the respective product-specific delegated acts. The product passports of the components can thus be integrated into the product passport of the product in question via references. This creates a complete data collection without the respective manufacturer being forced to compile and record all the information on the preliminary products themselves. This information can be easily integrated into the DPP of the preliminary product via a link.
However, this highly efficient procedure requires a special approach for software systems that access Digital Product Passports as data consumers. Data is always referenced and not replicated. The respective software therefore follows the path of the linked product passports in order to ‘collect’ all the information. This also ensures that the most up-to-date, complete and correct information is always used.
Since not all product groups will have a DPP at the same time, there will be a transition phase lasting several years during which some components will still require manual collection of information. The full value of the DPP system will become apparent once the main product groups have received their delegated acts.