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Digital Product Passport (DPP)

The DPP is a digital identity for a product, enabling traceability and transparency throughout its supply chain. According to the European Commission’s Single Market Strategy, the DPP is the “main tool for disclosing and sharing product information across all new and revised product legislation” and the “digital container for digital labels, conformity documentation, instructions and manuals, certain safety information, technical documentation, and other information required under EU law.”

Key component of the digitalisation of metrology and quality infrastructure

By linking up with the digitalisation of industry and commerce, the DPP can help ensure that the metrological foundation of the digital transformation becomes a cornerstone of industrial development and sustained prosperity worldwide. As one of the five key quality infrastructure (QI) stakeholders, the PTB is involved in the QI-Digital initiative and utilises the DPP and QI-Digital to share innovative concepts and findings in metrology with the world. This is achieved through participation in standardisation activities, the development of market-relevant digital tools, and the advancement of necessary research. 

Integrating metrology and QI into standardisation

The PTB is involved in national, European and international standardisation work relating to the DPP. Activities aimed at establishing uniform semantics and digital certificates contribute to the seamless integration of quality data for products into the DPP. To this end, the PTB is working on establishing a strong link between QI and the DPP.

  • Project Integrating the digital transformation of QI with the development of the DPP (in collaboration with DIN and DKE)
    • Duration 2025 - 2027
    • Within this framework, a task force comprising QI institutions and industry stakeholders has drawn up a catalogue of requirements for QI-Digital/DPP. These requirements include the following ones relating to metrology: 
      • Standardised structure for metrology, testing, and conformity data
      • Semantically unambiguous description
      • Unambiguous units and measurement quantities
      • Digitally mappable testing/conformity process
      • Machine-readable certificates instead of PDF-only
    • In addition, the company Innovapps is developing a DPP demonstrator based on the asset administration shell (AAS), which demonstrates the consistent use of structured, semantically unambiguous metrological data from sensors and measuring instruments. First use cases:
      • Seamless digital product documentation as a basis for audits, market surveillance, and operation
      • Digital representation of test and analysis certificates with machine-readable analysis and test data sets (e.g. Certificate of Analysis including DCC). This simplifies receiving inspections, minimises risks, and enables a differentiated quality assessment. Purely document-based (PDF-based) evidence is not sufficient to achieve the desired efficiency gains.
  • Project WIPANO DaCCore
    • Duration: 2026 – 2028
    • Consortium: PTB together with Fraunhofer IZFP (coordinator), Siemens, BAM, Vrana. DIN and dgzfp as associated partners
    • Establishing a machine-readable "digital language" for quality infrastructure based on the ISO/IEC 17000 series of standards.
    • Enabling seamless data exchange by embedding the digital language into Industry 4.0 concepts (AAS), and the Digital Product Passport (DPP).
    • Developing of a modular semantic and schema core 
    • Practical validation in testbeds, and the preparation for official international normative anchoring.

Innovation for market-relevant tools

  • Concept and Demonstrator Market Surveillance App
    • Concept paper and first demonstrator expected by the end of 2026
    • As part of the QI-Digital initiative and in collaboration with stakeholders from QI, market surveillance and industry, a QI-Digital focus group is developing a concept for a market surveillance app. The goal is a secure, traceable, and seamless software that strengthens market surveillance in Germany and makes an effective contribution to the EU single market. A key aspect are end-to-end digital processes through the integration of the DPP and existing government IT systems. First results of the focus group market surveillance (German).

The link between DPP research and industrial practice

  • IDTA Working Group Digital Quality Documents
    • Duration 2024 - 2028
    • Under the leadership of the PTB, the ‘Digital Quality Documents’ working group of the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA) is developing a specification for the integration of digital certificates (such as DCC, DCoC, etc.) into the DPP, based on the Industry 4.0 asset administration shell (AAS). The basic specification IDTA 02065-1 has already been published and allows digital certificates to be integrated into the DPP as files.
Outline of the main classes and properties of the compliance ontology module
Outline of the main classes and properties of the compliance ontology module. Entities and properties of the compliance ontology module are marked in blue color. They are linked with entities from the product ontology module (red color) and actor ontology module (green color) through properties within the connector ontology module (red color).
  • Project CIRPASS 2
    • Duration 2024 – 2027
    • As part of the EU-funded CIRPASS 2 consortium, the EU DPP core ontology is being developed for high-level DPP concepts – that is, those that apply to all product categories. The PTB is contributing to the topics units of measurement and compliance.