How to Prepare Your Product Data for Digital Product Passports

Step 1: Create reliable product identities

Every product needs a reliable identity. Define:

• Product ID
• Model
• Variant
• Version
• Batch or serial information where relevant

Avoid relying entirely on product names. Names change and duplicates occur. Identifiers provide a more reliable foundation.

Step 2: Structure your BOM

Create a machine-readable Bill of Materials. Instead of a single line such as "Housing – aluminium – Supplier A", structure information into individual fields:

• Component: Housing
• Material: Aluminium
• Mass: 4.2
• Unit: kg
• Supplier: Supplier A
• Geography: Sweden

Structured information can be reused much more easily. Learn what data belongs in a DPP.

Step 3: Connect suppliers

Every relevant material or component should be connectable to its supplier. This allows companies to:

• Request missing data
• Update information
• Assess data quality
• Maintain traceability

Supplier relationships become a central part of the product-data model rather than a side note in a spreadsheet.

Step 4: Connect environmental datasets

Materials and processes can be mapped to environmental datasets. This enables LCA calculations and provides a connection between physical product composition and environmental performance.

EasyLCA can help automate this mapping so that environmental impact calculations stay connected to the product structure.

Step 5: Organise documents

Connect supporting documents directly to products, components or suppliers. Examples include:

• Certificates
• Declarations
• Test reports
• EPDs
• Technical documentation
• Policies

Step 6: Track versions

Products change. A material may be replaced. A supplier may change. A component may become lighter. Your data system should record which information applies to which product version. Otherwise historical environmental and compliance results can become unreliable.

Step 7: Record data sources

Knowing a value is useful. Knowing where the value came from is even more useful. Store information about:

• Source
• Supplier
• Dataset
• Document
• Date
• Methodology
• Data quality

Step 8: Design access rights

Not every user should necessarily see every field. Separate information into appropriate access levels. DPP regulations may also require some fields to be public while others remain restricted.

Step 9: Make information accessible through APIs

Human-readable product pages are useful. Machine-readable interfaces are equally important. Structured APIs make it possible for product information to be reused across systems and for DPP data carriers to resolve correctly.

Step 10: Add the data carrier

Once the architecture exists, a QR code or other applicable data carrier can connect the physical product to its digital identity. The data carrier should be the last step, not the first.

DPP readiness checklist

Before implementing DPP, ask:

• Does every product have a stable identifier?
• Is our BOM structured?
• Are materials connected to suppliers?
• Can we request missing supplier information?
• Can documents be connected to products?
• Can we calculate environmental impacts?
• Can we manage product versions?
• Can we control access rights?
• Can systems access data programmatically?
• Can a physical product resolve to its digital information?

If several answers are no, product-data preparation should probably begin before the final DPP implementation.

The key takeaway

A Digital Product Passport should be the output of good product-data management, not the starting point. Build reliable product information first. Then the same infrastructure can support DPP, LCA, customer requests and other product compliance workflows.

Start structuring your product data in EasyLCA or book a demo to see how the platform supports DPP preparation.