Sustainability is the future, and the European Union is expected to pass new legislation that will drive businesses to build products more eco-consciously: it’s called Digital Product Passport (DPP). This involves creating a digital document for every SKU - detailing the product lifecycle, supply chain, recyclability, and overall sustainability of a product. But how should businesses create DPPs? What are the long term business benefits? And what are the best tools to enable DPP creation? Our integration partner, XSARUS, is a renowned digital commerce agency in The Netherlands that’s already helping their customers to create DPPs. We interviewed Alexander Robijn, Sales and Marketing Manager at XSARUS, to get his insight on the best practices of creating the Digital Product Passport. Read the interview to get Alexander’s first-hand perspective as an enabler of DPP!
What goes into building a Digital Product Passport?
“Building a Digital Product Passport (DPP) requires the collection of comprehensive product lifecycle data. It then involves integrating this data into a centralized system, in order to provide information about the transparency and sustainability of a product. A DPP contains information about the production process, supply chain, recyclability, and overall carbon footprint of a product. It also includes the environmental and safety standards that a product meets.
Compiling this info includes data standardization, compliance checks, and implementation of IT systems for data management and sharing. This is where a solution like the Alumio integration platform helps simplify DPP creation. Apart from this, a Digital Product Passport must be easy to find, ideally on the product itself, and can be accessed via a QR code, NFC chip, or RFID tag.”
Are there any case studies of customers creating Digital Product Passports?
“At XSARUS, we’re encouraging customers that are intrinsically motivated to be sustainable to get the first mover advantage on Digital Product Passport creation. We recently published a Digital Product Passport case study with one such customer: Vogels, a leading developer of high-quality TV brackets, monitor mounts, and LED suspension systems for the consumer and business market. Looking to reduce their environmental impact, Vogels partnered with a brand called Ecochain to use their Mobius software solution that helps map the carbon footprint of products in detail.
Vogels spent around a year having Mobius analyze all the components and production details of all their products, which was stored in their product data management solution (PDM) called SolidWorks. This made it possible for Mobius to create a detailed calculation of the GWO (Global Warming Potential) of their products. Apart from acquiring the data they needed to build their DPPs, the entire process also yielded valuable data that can be used to reduce the environmental impact of their components, processes, packaging, and more.
XSARUS helped use all the sustainability-related product data that Mobius generated to create detailed, marketing eco-sheets about the environmental impact of all Vogels products. Using the PIM system inriver, we created 54 new product attributes to accommodate the new DPP-related product data. These attributes help automate the creation of eco-sheets that are then made visible online on the product details page. This whole process is integrated with Vogels' Bynder DAM system, where the PDFs are automatically placed and provided with metadata.”
How long does it take to build a Digital Product Passport?
“The timeline for building a DPP can vary and can span from several months to a few years, depending on the complexity of the products and the readiness of the company's data infrastructure. Many businesses are in the early stages of planning and implementing DPPs. Early adopters are already aligning internal processes and data infrastructure to meet upcoming sustainability regulations like DPP to gain the competitive advantage. The time it takes to build a Digital Product Passport also depends on the complexity of the product assortment. A business with a less diverse and complex range of products can set up their Digital Product Passport creation process faster.”
What are some essential tools or apps for building Digital Product Passports?
“The process of creating a Digital Product Passport needs to essentially begin within the product development process itself, which mainly involves using a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system or PDM (Product Data Management) system. These are the systems where products can be constantly redesigned to lower carbon footprint and improve recyclability of a product. After the environmental impact of a product is reduced sufficiently, this renewed product data will ideally go into the ERP system of an organization. From the ERP, it really helps to then send all this product data to a PIM (Product Information Management) system, which plays a valuable role in DPP Creation.”
How does a PIM system help create a Digital Product Passport?
“A PIM system facilitates DPP creation since it can be used to swiftly create new sustainability-related product attributes and automate product data refinement. It also helps automatically publish the new DPP-related product data across marketing and sales channels and mediums. Businesses that don’t have DPP-specific product data stored within a PLM or PDM system, but rather have it stored in an Excel sheet or ERP system, can use a PIM system as a catchup system to rapidly enrich and distribute all this product data across channels. Most importantly, a PIM system significantly simplifies the translation of product data into multiple languages. This is a key requirement for creating DPPs in different languages, which will be required since every country is bound to have their own rules and legislation for how to present the Digital Product Passport.”
How does the iPaaS enable Digital Product Passport creation?
“While various systems like PDM, PLM, ERP, and PIM play a key role in creating and publishing Digital Product Passports, it is vital to have a centralized system to streamline and integrate data across all these different systems.
An iPaaS or “integration Platform as a Service” like Alumio helps simplify DPP creation by enabling seamless integration of various applications and data sources. This ensures that all relevant product information is accurately captured and synchronized. Apart from maintaining data integrity, the iPaaS helps transform data and automate workflows to seamlessly move data from one integrated system to another, which is essential to automate the DPP creation process.
The Alumio integration platform already offers Connectors for PIM systems and ERP systems like SAP that have PLM modules, and so it’s already well-positioned to integrate applications and data sources that are essential for DPP creation. Most importantly, it can save a lot of time in importing, transforming, and exporting data across various systems to enable DPP creation.”
Is Digital Product Passport relevant for all industries or just a few?
“Eventually, the Digitally Product Passport will be relevant for all manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, since sustainable product development is likely to soon become the norm. The EU is expected to pass legislation regard Digital Product Passport in upcoming years, initially prioritizing certain industries before making it mandatory for all other industries to adopt DPPs by 2030.
Most of our customers that are brand manufacturers create their own products and are already in a position to collect sustainability-related product data for DPP creation. On the other hand, retail customers will have to work with manufacturers that can provide them with the environment impact data of products, in order to comply with the legislation. Businesses that have already gotten ahead of the curve and created their DPPs are using it as effective marketing material, while making them available through QR codes on the products for eco-conscious customers to scan.”
Will the Digital Product Passport be sufficient proof for sustainability?
“While the DPP is a significant step towards demonstrating sustainability, it should be supplemented with additional information such as third-party certifications, sustainability, and reports. Being sustainable should be an ongoing initiative, since there will always be newer opportunities to improve the environmental impact of products.
Many eco-conscious brands, like some of our customers, publish sustainability reports to keep their customers well informed. The report includes all sorts of valuable sustainability information and initiatives of the business. For instance, one of these customers asked us to inform them about the carbon impact of their e-commerce environment that XSARUS hosted. We were happy to let them know that it was carbon neutral.”
What are the long-term business benefits of the Digital Product Passport?
“Apart from improved sustainability of products, three key benefits of building Digital Product Passports are streamlined operations, improved supply chain efficiency, and most importantly, market differentiation. By ensuring that companies deeply analyze the environmental impact of their products, DPP creation also helps discover operational inefficiencies, savings on product material costs, minimizing wastage, and better product transportation options.
Using solutions like the Alumio integration platform to enable DPP creation could also be a great opportunity to integrate data across various departments, systems, and applications. At the same time, DPP creation demands a more integrated and transparent supply chain process. The Digital Product Passport can also be effective springboard to become more sustainable and can be used to win over eco-conscious consumers with the market differentiation. On that note, as mentioned earlier, the time is now ripe for businesses (especially the ones that are intrinsically sustainable) to greatly benefit from getting the first mover advantage with the Digital Product Passport.”
Other blogs you might be interested in!
