DPP Digital Product Passport: Bringing the Standards to Life

Related Vendors

FAULHABER Drive Systems

Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA)

SIMTOS (Seoul International Machine Tool Show)

The digital product passport (DPP) is taking shape: At the international conference DPP4EU 2026 (June 1 to 3, Brussels), the recently published European technical standards for the DPP were presented to a broad expert audience. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK played a key role in their development and is supporting companies and associations in their implementation.

The battery passport kicked off in 2023 with the EU Battery Regulation and will be followed by other product categories such as textiles, electronic devices, furniture and building materials in the coming years: Digital product passports are intended to provide consumers, companies and authorities with reliable product information across the entire life cycle, from production to use and recycling. For this to succeed, the underlying technical standards must form a coherent overall system.

Thomas Knothe, head of the Business Process and Factory Management department at Fraunhofer IPK, chairs the CEN CLC JTC 24, the Joint Technical Committee of the two European standardization organizations CEN and Cenelec. Fraunhofer IPK played a key role in developing the basic interoperable structure in advance, so that the individual technical standards are interlinked in a technology-neutral and interoperable manner.

"The basic technical DPP standards are here. They create transparency for consumers, industry and authorities. But a standard alone does not change anything. Now it is important to fill it with life: with concrete implementations, open tools and sector-specific reference solutions that really make it easier for companies to get started. This is exactly what we are working on at Fraunhofer IPK," says Thomas Knothe.

Open Source As A Lever for Rapid Implementation

To lower the barrier to entry for companies, Knothe and his team at Fraunhofer IPK, together with partners such as Gefeg mbH and the Technical University of Berlin, have developed an open source test system that organizations can use to validate their DPP implementations. In addition, sector-specific reference systems have been developed, including for the battery sector, which serve as a common orientation for associations and companies. According to Knothe, experience with the use of these reference systems shows that setting up a system is around five times faster and easier than with conventional approaches.

This topic was addressed, among others, on the opening day of DPP4EU in the conference stream on standardization, which the Fraunhofer IPK expert led on June 1 together with Martin Schreck, Convenor and Thomas Rödding, Co-Chair of JTC 24. They discussed how the developed standards can already be implemented openly today—under the title "JTC 24 Standards Applicable for Everyone—Open Source Implementation of Essential Parts".

Concrete Technical Solutions

In the afternoon session "Solutions for Challenges", system providers presented concrete technical solutions with which the standards can be implemented in a tangible way for companies, both for economic benefit and to achieve compliance. Various systems were presented, from the technical GS1 ecosystem and the DPP4.0 based on the Asset Administration Shell to the test environment for the EU Battery Passport. The session showed examples of how the JTC 24 standards are implemented in practice.

International Standardization for Global Interoperability

A DPP is only fully effective if it works across borders. As Chair of the CEN/Cenelec JTC 24 Digital Product Passport Framework and System, Thomas Knothe is also involved in the development of global standardization under the umbrella of ISO and IEC. The closing panel of the first conference day on global harmonization underlined this role: Only those who actively shape the international standardization landscape can ensure that European DPP solutions remain globally compatible. In addition to the Fraunhofer IPK expert, representatives from UN/Cefact, DIN, DKE and BASF discussed the principles of the interoperability required for this.

From Implementation to the Future of the DPP

The second day of the conference focused on barriers, opportunities and practical platform solutions. The event concluded on June 3 with a high-level panel discussion on the future of the DPP, in which Knothe and representatives of the participating directorates of the European Commission outlined the next steps.

DPP As A Hub for Global Product Data Ecosystems

The Fraunhofer IPK sees the digital product passport not as an end point, but as a starting point: in the medium term, it is to develop into a hub for global product data ecosystems. The consistently open approach to test and reference systems is a deliberate strategic decision. After all, open, interoperable standards ultimately benefit both companies and consumers.

This makes the DPP an efficiency tool and a business enabler for industry and trade.

Thomas Knothe

For example, Knothe and his team are currently developing an AI-based DPP solution for the renovation of electrical installations in buildings, which will enable tradespeople to choose an efficient, safe and sustainable renovation approach in advance of the work. With around 14 million houses in Germany currently in need of energy-efficient refurbishment, the need is obvious.