Is Your Product Data Good Enough For Digital Product Passports?

A key takeaway from the Digital Product Passport (DPP) projects we've worked on so far: the quality of current product data of many companies is not good enough. But there are great variations, both between companies and in readiness from different aspects.

Some companies are on top of everything and just need to add the specific data required for DPP's. Other companies first need to work through their current product data to get it up to par.

To which group do you belong?

Are you sure?

This is why we keep talking about the urgency of starting your preparations for DPP compatibility. To find out in which group you belong. If your data isn't good enough, you are up for a major overhaul of your available product data, even before you start on supplementing it with the data requested in the DPP regulation.

The shortcomings can be of many different kinds; availability, quality, classification as well as organisational:

Availability/Access

🔵 Do you have it? All of it?

🔵 Do you have free access to it? Or is it locked into a third party system where you might have to pay your supplier extra to use it? Or is it in the hands of an outsourcing partner?

Quality

🔵 Is it correct? Verified?

🔵 Is it consistently formatted and using consistent units of measurement (for example)?

🔵 Is the data valid? And validity verified regularly?

🔵 Are external certificates correct and valid? Possible to validate online?

Quality Control/Security

🔵 Is it shielded from manipulation?

🔵 Is editing controlled and traced in a secured way?

🔵 Is it classified for different access levels (or at least the system prepared for it)?

Organisational

🔵 Is responsibility for data clear and assigned?

🔵 Is editorial access clear and securely managed?

If your answers aren't "yes, of course" on all points, you have some ground to cover to get ready to even start adding DPP data to your systems.

Still this is only the beginning. As DPP data need to be assembled in parallell with the physical product, you will need to make sure your suppliers are in as good a shape as you are.

Once you're comfortable with the state of your product data, you will need a system to easily handle not only your data, but the data of your suppliers as well as the distribution (access controlled) of it, downstream from you in the supply chain.

To you want help in getting started?

Just reach out to us at https://www.digitalproductpassport.com/about

Is your product data ready to be tested?

Image by Micky Suarez on iStock