Digital Product Passport (DPP): Start with Open Content

Agile approach for Granular Information Rights Management in DPP

Granular information rights management is the most difficult use case for the DPP. Use an Agile approach for DPP and start with an MVP based on open content.

The recommendation for the development of Digital Product Passport is to use an Agile approach. Start with the Minimum Viable Product with the easiest use case for a DPP. Make this a success and learn. This will keep costs down and create adoption. Expand in a period of multiple years to the more difficult use cases. This will prevent overengineering solutions which bring an enormous cost burden.

Currently, the digital product passport is being engineered for the most difficult use cases as described below.

Most difficult DPP use case: granular digital rights management on sensitive information

Use case: An Economic Operator Creates a DPP with Competitor sensitive information on the Item level based on Configure to Order. A downstream value chain actor wants to Read and Update a DPP on the Item level via an API linked with its ERP system using this Competitor sensitive information.

This use case uncovers the DPP Achilles Heel which is creating verifiable N-M Trust relations on sensitive information.

The problem is the N-M trust relation

An Economic Operator needs to keep control of who is able to access the Competitor’s Sensitive information.  In the end all Economic Operators will want to control this information with all their value chain actors, resulting in an N-M relation, all to do with trust and digital identities.

A solution can be the use of eIDAS for authenticating a Value Chain Operator.
The drawback is that there is no widespread implementation of eIDAS, for every employee the cost would be euro 30-40 per year, and M2M communication is not yet implemented in the ERP system.

Economic Operators need to control their sensitive information leading to an administrative overhead

Even with eIDAS the Economic Operator would need to authorize the Value Chain Operator in some way to access their crucial competitor sensitive information. This is the most complex part of the puzzle. The fear of losing control of the flow of information is, in our humble opinion, so large that the Economic Operator wants to keep total control either in their own administration or maybe at a DDPaaS provider. This will lead to complex administrations, finicky onboarding, and day-to-day management of the authorizations, and an administrative overhead other geopolitical economic regions do not have.

Point of View: The most difficult use case is for a limited number (~5%) of economical viable activities, but will be ~80% of the cost.

In all the DPP pilots there is a lot of wishful thinking on activities that might take place like refurbishing and repairing furniture but in the end, there is only a limited amount of economically viable business activities. The first indication is that the DPP will not change the way of working dramatically for these businesses. Only in the remarketing of refurb products, the DPP will play a role.

The administrative overhead of this most complex use case will have an impact on personnel and IT. My assumption is that this would then be 80% of the cost of the DPP for any company. With the current scarcity to find good personnel, large companies will outsource to other geopolitical regions and SMEs will suffer.

Recommendation: Keep it Simple – start with a Minimal Viable DPP for 20% of the cost with 80% of the effect

Therefore the recommendation is to keep the initial DPP simple. Start with the easiest use case at 20% of the cost of the complex one. Start with information that is readily available and will give immediately 80% of the benefits in market awareness.

DPP with Open Content information

Use case: An Economic Operator Creates a Digital Product Passport with Public Information on Model level accessible as Read-Only via the Web to the General Public 

This use case will work for the general public, create first successes, and enable all to expand on it with new releases of there are real proof points of creating real impact. This will keep the administrative burden low and will enable the EU to stay economically competitive.

GSPR and PPWR information available as Open Content

Already before the DPP goes into effect, the information needed for safety and packaging will become available as open content in the Icecat database.
If you want to try this yourself go to icecat.biz. or contact us

Our recommendation: Start with the easiest use case with an Open DPP and learn and expand in a period of 5 years to the more difficult use cases

GLOSSARY

A Digital Product Passport will contain information on different levels:

• Model: GTIN/EAN or Brand and Manufacturing Part number
• Batch: Batch number
• Item: A serial number or a Build to Order of Configure to order reference

A Digital Product Passport will contain different types of information

• Public information: packaging, carbon footprint, energy consumption
• Competitor-sensitive information: exact material compositions and fractions, repair part codes, 
• Compliance information: tax and duty information, statistics, aggregated figures by company

Multiple parties will use the DPP

• Economic Operators: responsible for publishing
• The general public (consumers and business): making informed decisions on new, remarketed, refurbished, and repaired product
• Downstream value chain actors: repairing, refurbishing, remarketing
• Governmental bodies: tracking progress on the environment

Actions that can be done on a DPP 

• Create
• Read-Only
• Update a DPP
• Delete a DPP

Multiple ways to access a DPP

• Web: human access the DPP via a web interface
• API: Machine2Machine interface all kinds of software using an API to access the DPP

Lucas van Rijen