Creating a digital product passport as part of day-to-day operations

Our latest technical article in IT&Production
This article was originally published in the journal „IT & Production“, published in the September 2026 issue.

Through the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the EU is gradually introducing the Digital Product Passport (DPP). From 2027, the first product groups, such as electric vehicle batteries, will be subject to mandatory registration. Other industrial products, machinery and components will follow. However, IT systems are already being developed to integrate this task efficiently into day-to-day operations.

FFor businesses, the DPP is therefore not an optional digitalisation project, but a regulatory requirement. It is crucial to understand the requirements and to have the technical capability to implement them. The Digital Product Passport is a structured, machine-readable data set that makes key product information available digitally throughout the entire life cycle – for example, regarding materials, CO₂ emissions, supply chains, reparability or recyclability. It is becoming mandatory for market access, transparency and sustainability verification in Europe. Companies must therefore implement technical solutions relatively quickly in order to meet the requirements. Software Factory addressed this issue at an early stage as part of its projects.

 

 

Battery Pass in the industrial research sector

This enabled the software provider to gain practical experience in the development of a digital battery passport. As part of a research project, this battery passport was designed and technically implemented, integrated into a research production line for lithium-ion cells. The challenge lay in consistently capturing production, process, energy and quality data from different systems, organising it in a structured manner and making it usable for regulatory purposes.

The following were also included:

• integrated heterogeneous production and process control systems,
• Energy and building data linked to production data,
• Data models prepared to meet regulatory requirements,
• Web-based access solutions implemented,
• Industry 4.0 and data-driven approaches are taken into account.

The result was a fully functional technical system operating within a complex production environment. The battery passport produced complies with EU requirements and contains all 107 necessary data points across the seven defined data categories.

 

 

Demonstration unit for industry

In addition, the company has developed a demo version of a digital product passport in collaboration with an industrial firm, which is intended to serve as a scalable reference architecture for production use. The concept behind the demonstrator is based on the standardised data exchange format of the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). The AAS enables a structured, interoperable description of products, providing an excellent foundation for the DPP. Thanks to the AAS’s standardised REST interface, once published, the product passport can not only be read but also interactively expanded and populated by participants throughout the supply chain. The DPP thus becomes an actively used, distributed information system. The service-oriented architecture remains modular and scalable.

The product passport architecture comprises several specialised AAS services:

• AAS Discovery Interface – This enables a product serial number to be assigned to a specific AAS.
• AAS Sub-model: Registries – This is where AAS and their sub-models are registered. The registries contain references that can be used to locate the actual data within the system.
• AAS Environment – It contains the AAS instances and sub-models with the actual product and lifecycle data.

This architecture allows for the separation of identification, registration and data storage, which facilitates scaling to accommodate large product portfolios.

 

 

Produced directly from the production line

A key component of the demonstrator is the DPP Manager. This module enables the automated creation of a product passport directly from the production line. The generation process can be triggered by a signal such as an MQTT message or a REST request. When a product reaches a defined stage in the production process – such as being assigned a serial number or passing the end-of-line test – the product passport is automatically generated, populated with structured data and registered. This makes the DPP an integral part of the production process – rather than a separate, downstream documentation step.

 

 

DPP Web UI with authorisation system

A web UI application was also developed for users.
This enables:

• searching for product data sheets,
• the display of product information,
• an authorisation system for access control.

This ensures that the various stakeholders in the service – from sustainability officers to partners in the supply chain – receive the relevant information.

Integration and architectural effort

The digital product passport is not an isolated IT add-on. It requires integration with ERP, PLM and MES systems, robust data models, scalable service architectures, and clearly defined governance and access frameworks. The battery passport implemented in the research sector and the AAS-based DPP demonstrator for industry demonstrate that regulatory requirements can be implemented in a technically robust, automated and production-oriented manner.

 

 

Your personal contact:

Christian Krasenbrink
CEO of Software Factory GmbH