Circular Economy: The Powerful Influence of Digital Product Passport on Parts Management

Born from Europe’s push toward circular economy goals, the DPP is much more than a compliance exercise. It promises full product transparency, tracking sourcing, usage, maintenance, and end-of-life status through a single digital record tied directly to the product itself.

As regulatory deadlines approach, manufacturers and service providers face a choice: treat the DPP as a box to tick, or leverage it to build stronger customer relationships, extend product life cycles, and drive sustainable growth.

What Is a Digital Product Passport?

Drawing a comparison to a travel passport, Dr. Chaudhuri explained that the DPP serves as a unique identifier, tracking a product’s journey across its entire lifecycle from sourcing and manufacturing through maintenance, repair, refurbishment, and eventual end-of-life processing.

Embedded directly on products (typically via a barcode or scannable identifier), the DPP offers easy access to rich datasets, including:

• Material origins and certifications
• Environmental impact data
• Maintenance and repair histories
• Usage history and conditions

Rather than relying on scattered paperwork or disconnected databases, stakeholders across the supply chain can access a real-time, verified history of the product. It’s a single source of truth that streamlines decision-making, especially when it comes to end-of-life options like recycling, reuse, or remanufacturing.

Why the European Union Is Driving the DPP

The primary motivation behind the DPP initiative is to support a circular economy, an economic model that minimises waste by keeping materials and products in use for as long as possible.

Today, determining whether a product can be refurbished or recycled often requires destructive testing or lengthy manual inspections. 

With a DPP, companies could instead access a comprehensive maintenance and usage history instantly, allowing for scientific, data-backed decisions about how best to handle used products.

Priority sectors identified for early adoption include:

• EV batteries (live by 2027)
• Electronics
• Textiles
• Construction materials
• Chemicals and industrial components

However, many industries and their global supply chains are far from ready.

Challenges of Adoption

Despite the potential, Dr. Chaudhuri was candid about the obstacles ahead. Chief among them:

• Data standards: No clear, cross-industry standards currently exist.
• Dynamic data capture: Recording real-time maintenance, repair, and usage data across the product lifecycle is complex and resource-intensive.
• Supply chain compliance: Global suppliers, particularly in regions without similar regulations, may be reluctant to share detailed product data.
• Data security and integrity: Protecting sensitive information while making it accessible across multiple stakeholders presents technological and governance challenges.

Simply put, building a Digital Product Passport will not be quick or easy. But companies that wait risk being left behind, especially as EU regulations start to bite.

A Strategic Opportunity, Not Just a Compliance Burden

Dr. Chaudhuri warned against viewing the DPP solely as a regulatory hurdle. Instead, he emphasised the strategic opportunities it presents.

Organisations that proactively embrace the DPP can:

• Extend product life cycles through better maintenance and refurbishment decisions.
• Improve circular business models by offering services such as certified pre-owned products or parts recovery programmes.
• Enhance brand value by demonstrating commitment to transparency, sustainability, and customer-centric innovation.
• Optimise asset management by integrating maintenance history into spare parts logistics and service planning.

Ultimately, he argued that the DPP supports smarter, more profitable decision-making throughout the product life cycle and not just at its end.

Early Movers: Volvo and Silentnight

Some organisations are already leading the charge.

Volvo, for example, is well ahead of schedule in implementing a battery passport for its EV models. Despite sourcing components globally, from Africa to Asia, the company has developed a working model that traces material origins, usage patterns, and recyclability metrics. This signals to the broader automotive industry that large-scale implementation is both achievable and advantageous.

Closer to home, British mattress manufacturer Silentnight has developed its own version of a product passport to improve the recyclability of its products. In an industry where material reuse has traditionally been difficult, Silentnight now leverages its passport as both an operational tool and a marketing advantage.

These early adopters illustrate that forward-thinking companies are already seizing the opportunity rather than waiting for regulation to force their hand.

Implications for the Spare Parts and Service Sector

Dr. Chaudhuri stressed that spare parts and service providers will play an important role in bringing the DPP vision to life.

Maintenance teams, field service engineers, and aftersales specialists already collect valuable operational data such as maintenance records, repair logs, and usage metrics that will become critical inputs for the passport.

Key takeaways for the service community include:

• Data ownership discussion must evolve. Maintenance data, currently often viewed as proprietary, will increasingly need to be shared across extended supply chains.
• Proactive digital transformation is essential. Mobile-first service platforms, predictive maintenance tools, and IoT-enabled monitoring will become foundational.
• Service teams will become strategic custodians of product lifecycle data, enabling downstream decisions about reuse, recycling, or resale.

For service organisations already embracing servitisation and performance-based business, the DPP offers a chance to deepen customer relationships, differentiate service offerings, and reduce long-term operational costs.

A UK-Specific Reality Check

Post-Brexit, it may be tempting for UK manufacturers and service providers to view the DPP as a “European issue.” However, as Dr. Chaudhuri pointed out, the UK remains heavily intertwined with EU markets, particularly in manufacturing sectors such as automotive, electronics, and chemicals.

With approximately 42% of UK trade still linked to the EU, much of it in manufactured goods, British firms cannot afford to ignore these developments. If a company’s customer in Europe demands a product passport, compliance will not be optional.

Moreover, given the global nature of most supply chains, it’s likely that DPP-related requirements will extend beyond Europe over time, potentially sparking similar regulations in markets like China and the United States.

The Time to Act Is Now

The Digital Product Passport will not simply be another tick-box compliance item. It represents a foundational shift in how companies track, manage, and extend the value of their products.

Manufacturers, service providers, and supply chain partners who start preparing now by collecting the right data, collaborating across functions, and aligning processes will be better positioned to thrive in a circular economy.

Dr. Chaudhuri concluded: It’s not a matter of if, but when. Organisations that see the DPP as a catalyst for innovation, not just regulation, will be the ones that will lead the next era of sustainable growth.