Product Carbon Footprint What the digital product passport can achieve

Related Vendors

ZVEI e.V. Verband der Elektro- und Digitalindustrie

Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA)

Wuxi InfiMotion Technology Co., Ltd.

Sustainability and circular economy are already a relevant topic today and are expected to gain in importance in the near future. The topic of sustainability is fraught with great uncertainty, as the details and possible implementations in this area are unclear. The ZVEI Show-Case PCF@ControlCabinet demonstrates how the calculation of the PCF can be made transparently.

The declaration of the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) will become one of many new regulatory requirements of the European Union as part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the Green Deal. Following on from this, the industry is expected to be obliged in all sectors to provide certain product information in the form of a Digital Product Passport (DPP).

The goal behind this is to increase the sustainability of products by providing information on various sustainability aspects of the respective product to different actors such as customers, users and authorities/market surveillance, as explained by Stefan Schork, Manager Automation at ZVEI. He expects that the first obligations will not be long in coming: "For which product groups the Digital Product Passport is introduced first is currently still being discussed. However, generally the introduction of the first Digital Product Passports can be expected from 2026."

The digital product passport is expected to be introduced for initial product groups, such as textiles, steel and iron, from 2026 onwards.

Stefan Schork, Manager Automation at ZVEI

The ZVEI show case "PCF@Control Cabinet", which was presented for the first time at the Hannover Messe 2022, demonstrates how the Digital Product Passport can be implemented flexibly and efficiently. Using the example of a switch cabinet, the ZVEI shows how the concept of the Digital Product Passport for Industry 4.0 (DPP4.0) makes it possible to document and provide the required product information. Schork explains: "DPP4.0 serves to technically fulfill the requirements for the digital product passport." The PCF information is provided by all participating companies, whereupon the system integrator has the opportunity to access the PCF information in the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) by scanning the ID link on the product and to automatically add this information to the overall PCF of the cabinet during installation.

The DPP4.0 concept combines two standards that were developed as part of the Industry 4.0 initiative:

• the Digital Nameplate (DNP4.0) via IEC 61406 (Identification Link) for unique identification of a product, e.g., using QR code, and

• the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) according to IEC 63278 (in progress) for the semantic structuring of product information in an interoperable data format.

How Industry 4.0, the digital twin, and the product passport are related

The basic idea of Industry 4.0 is the linkage of OT and IT levels. Each asset at the OT level (hardware and software) becomes an I4.0 component through linkage with the so-called Asset Administration Shell (AAS), thereby creating general interoperability between all I4.0 components and connecting the I4.0 component to the IoT world in a plug-and-play manner. The AAS provides a framework format for describing the assets in a standardized and semantically unambiguous form, thereby acting as a digital twin of the asset. Stefan Schork explains: "Digital twins can take on different forms, characteristics and scopes. One form is a comprehensive description of the properties of a usually physical object. The digital product passport also includes a group of product information or properties, and thus corresponds to a subset of the digital twin."

The AAS is the digital twin for Industry 4.0.

Stefan Schork, Manager Automation at ZVEI

Using various submodels, product information is semantically uniquely structured and made machine-readable so that also regulatory required as are required for example within the framework of the DPP can be depicted—without the need for a new system to be used.

What this means for designers and developers

The DPP is intended to provide a way for designers and developers to compare supplier products and select them according to their sustainability. In addition, the relevant information from the supplied products should be able to be processed automatically in their own systems. This comes into play when the DPP of their own product is to be created. "In general, the twin can also provide additional relevant information, such as dimensions, functions and installation instructions. This information can also be used automatically in various processes," Schork continues.

Another advantage of the DPP4.0 concept: According to ZVEI, it can easily be expanded in the future by adding additional submodels that represent product information that needs to be documented as part of new and other regulatory requirements. It is an easily learnable and therefore easily repeatable pattern.

Identification Link and Asset Administration Shell, the two standards combined by the DPP4.0, are well known to already exist. In the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA), so to speak the user organization of the AAS, work is being done on the standardization of the different, use case related submodels, says Stefan Schork. The IDTA already has many national and international members and continues to grow steadily. Accordingly, companies are also working to implement AAS. As for the comprehensive implementation, including various product groups, Stefan Schork expects that this will take some time. When asked where the industry will stand in five years regarding AAS, Digital Twin, DPP and sustainability assessment, Stefan Schork replies:

The importance of data is already high today and will continue to increase in the future, as more and more systems, programs and especially artificial intelligences depend on an extensive data base. The digital twin in the form of the AAS offers enormous potential to meet the requirements for data quality and to provide it in an interoperable way. As large companies are already leading the way and more and more are becoming interested in the topic, a widespread proliferation can be expected. Regulatory initiatives such as DPP are also increasingly relying on data, which is driving the topic further forward.

But for Stefan Schork, it is also clear that the sustainability assessment and the significance of various sustainability indicators must improve in the coming years, or at least a common base must be created to allow for genuine evaluations and comparisons.

What happens next

The current demonstrators are versions in which not all concepts have been implemented to their full potential. Some questions are still open, but will be answered in the next steps. In particular, the stated values of the Product Carbon Footprints should be seen only as examples for the technical proof of concept and possibly as rough estimates—there is no claim to accuracy/correctness. In particular, the comparability of the product-specific Product Carbon Footprints among each other is not given at the current time.

For Hannover Fair 2024, further use cases are being planned, particularly referring to additional, non-DPP relevant information. In addition, more companies have expressed support for DPP4.0 and are participating in the project.