How Digital Product Passports Affect Different Roles in Your Organisation

Digital Product Passports are a cross-functional responsibility

A Digital Product Passport is only as useful as the data behind it. That data is rarely owned by one department. The environmental information may come from sustainability, the compliance evidence from legal, the supplier data from procurement, and the product structure from product management.

Successful DPP implementation therefore requires a common understanding of who is responsible for which information, and how it flows together.

Sustainability Manager

For sustainability teams, DPP can increase the importance of structured environmental product information. Typical responsibilities may include:

• LCA results
• Carbon footprint information
• Environmental datasets
• Recycled content
• Environmental declarations
• Sustainability indicators

The challenge shifts from producing individual sustainability reports toward maintaining environmental information at product level. Learn how LCA feeds into DPP.

Compliance Manager

Compliance teams need to understand which requirements apply to each product. Their role may include:

• Identifying applicable regulations
• Maintaining compliance evidence
• Validating mandatory DPP fields
• Managing declarations and certificates
• Monitoring regulatory changes

The DPP can become another digital interface through which compliance information is managed and accessed.

Procurement

Procurement plays a critical role because much of the required information originates upstream. Procurement may need to request:

• Material composition
• Country of origin
• Manufacturing information
• Recycled content
• Environmental declarations
• Chemical information
• Supplier-specific environmental data

Supplier data quality can therefore directly affect DPP data quality. See how EasyLCA structures supplier data.

Product Manager

Product managers understand how products are structured and changed. Important DPP-related responsibilities may include:

• Product models
• Variants
• Product versions
• BOM changes
• Components
• Lifecycle status

This becomes especially important when determining whether environmental or compliance information still applies after a product changes.

IT and Data Teams

DPP introduces important technical requirements. IT teams may be responsible for:

• Product identifiers
• APIs
• Data integrations
• Authentication
• Access rights
• Data carriers
• Interoperability
• Security
• Long-term availability

DPP should therefore be considered part of the company's product-data architecture.

Operations

Operations teams can contribute manufacturing information such as:

• Production location
• Energy consumption
• Manufacturing processes
• Batch information
• Waste
• Quality information

These data may also support LCA calculations.

Management

For management, DPP is fundamentally about data readiness and regulatory risk. Important questions include:

• Do we know which regulations apply to our products?
• Can we access reliable product composition data?
• Can we collect missing information from suppliers?
• Who owns product sustainability data?
• Can our systems expose structured information?
• Can we demonstrate where information came from?

Who should own the DPP project?

There is no universal answer. For many companies, the strongest approach will be cross-functional. A possible ownership model is:

• Compliance — regulatory requirements
• Sustainability — environmental information
• Product — product structure
• Procurement — supplier information
• IT — infrastructure and integrations
• Operations — manufacturing information
• Management — governance

Frequently asked questions

Is DPP an IT project?

Partly, but not exclusively. IT can provide the infrastructure, while product, supplier, sustainability and compliance teams provide much of the information.

Is DPP a sustainability project?

Sustainability is an important component, but DPP can also contain technical, compliance, circularity and product information.

Who should start preparing?

Companies should create a cross-functional group involving at least product, compliance, sustainability, procurement and IT.

The key takeaway

Digital Product Passports turn product compliance into a shared data responsibility. Companies that assign every DPP task to one department risk creating another information silo. The better approach is to establish a common product-data foundation where each team owns and maintains the information it understands best.

Explore how EasyLCA helps teams collaborate on product data or book a demo to discuss your setup.