DiPP: Digital Product Passport for Secure Information Exchange in the Supply Chain

The increasingly evident threats posed by climate change are raising awareness in society regarding responsible resource management. This is bringing the topic of sustainability more and more to the forefront, and it is now politically and internationally anchored with the United Nations' "Sustainable Development Goals." But even on a national level, companies are being entrusted with more responsibility, such as through legislation like supply chain laws. The goal is to achieve a sustainable circular economy, where resources are efficiently utilized and reused.

The food industry contributes significantly to CO2 emissions and requires a growing amount of resources. To achieve the goals of a sustainable circular economy in the food industry, comprehensive information transparency is necessary. This allows raw material producers and food processing companies to optimize their production, and consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. A key technology defined by policy makers is the Digital Product Passport. This follows the principle of a digital product record, which accompanies a product from raw materials and processing to usage and disposal, gathering all relevant information about the product. However, the Digital Product Passport is currently only defined as a vision.

The project "Digital Product Passport for Secure Information Exchange in the Supply Chain" (DiPP) aims to develop a product passport that offers tamper-proof and transparent data exchange. At the same time, role-based data access should be enabled, preserving the privacy interests of stakehodlers and preventing sensitive competitive information from being freely accessible. This endeavor combines two core technologies.

The "Asset Administration Shell" (AAS) forms the basis for information modeling. This standard has been established for a long time and is continuously evolving. Due to the modular structure of the information models, they are flexible and dynamic. Additionally, there are numerous interfaces that are already being used at various points in the industry. Distributed Ledger Technology is used for tamper-proof and transparent data exchange. In combination, a product passport is intended to be created that can not only capture and distribute all relevant product data but also enable new business models along the supply chain.