What documents do you need for a digital product passport?
A digital product passport consists of data, not a single document. In practice, you gather information from four types of sources: product identification such as type and model numbers, technical documentation about materials and composition, certificates and declarations demonstrating that the product complies with regulations, and data on origin and the parties in the supply chain. Which data is precisely mandatory is not set out in one central list that applies to all products.
That last point is the detail that matters most in this topic. The regulation itself describes the framework, but the exact content requirements per product group are established via separate, later regulations per sector. For some product groups, that specification has not yet been published. A list that appears complete today may prove incomplete once the rules for your specific product group are established. Those gathering documents now would therefore be wise to start broadly and keep an eye on the classification per product group.
Data that occur in virtually every product
Regardless of the product group, a passport usually requests a number of basic data. Think of the name and contact details of the manufacturer or importer, a unique product or batch number, the country of production, and a description of the materials the product is made of. Additionally, information about repair and maintenance is often requested, as well as data on recyclability at the end of the product's life. For products already subject to existing product safety rules, such as CE marking, the passport often aligns with documentation you already have: declarations of conformity, test reports and instructions for use then provide a large part of the basis.
Certificates and declarations
Certificates demonstrating that a product complies with safety, environmental or quality requirements often accompany the passport. These are not necessarily new documents; it is about existing declarations that you link to the passport, so that a supervisor or purchaser can retrieve them via the QR code. It is therefore worthwhile to review which certificates you already have and which are still missing, before you start on the passport.
Origin and the role of your suppliers
Some of the requested data is not about the end product, but about the path to it: which raw materials were used, from which supplier, and under what conditions they were produced. For companies that do not produce themselves but import or assemble, this means you depend on information that your own suppliers must provide. It is therefore advisable to speak with suppliers early about what data they can provide and in what form. Anyone starting this only when the passport is delivered risks delays because data is missing or not available in usable form.
Where you get the data from
Many companies underestimate how fragmented this information already is within their own organisation. Technical drawings are with engineering, certificates with quality, procurement data with procurement and customer information with sales. An initial inventory of what is already there prevents you from doing duplicate work or requesting data again that is already somewhere in the organisation. For those who want to see which data are relevant for their own product group, provides a brief scan with an initial indication a starting point without having to figure everything out straight away.
Keeping documents up to date
A passport is not a snapshot. If a supplier, a material or a production process changes, the underlying documentation may also change. This is one of the reasons why a passport should not be viewed as a one-off project, but as something that requires maintenance for as long as the product is on the market. In the knowledge base sorted by topic you can find more about what this maintenance looks like in practice and what role different departments play in it.
The conversation with your software supplier
Because the data comes from multiple systems, it is useful to discuss early with your software supplier or ERP provider how this data is recorded, linked and kept up to date. Ask specifically which fields they already support and which still need to be filled in manually. You can read more about how prodpas.eu collects and processes this data on the page about how it works.
For your own situation, it remains the case that the exact documentation requirements depend on your product group and on regulations that are still partially being developed. To get a first assessment of what is relevant for your products, you can do the free quick-scan or go through the topics in the knowledge base.