Introduction
Amid growing demands for traceability, transparency, and sustainability, the ability to accurately document a product’s origin and journey has become strategic. The concept of the product passport is gradually emerging as a concrete response to these challenges, leveraging in particular the mechanisms of data lineage. This combination—at the intersection of master data, compliance, and operational performance—is redefining governance practices.
The Product Passport: A New Strategic Asset
The product passport is a structured set of standardized information designed to accompany a product throughout its lifecycle: manufacturing, distribution, use, repair, and recycling. It addresses regulatory compliance requirements (such as the EU circular economy directive) as well as the need for transparency toward customers, partners, and authorities.
Multi-Source Data to Secure
Building a reliable product passport requires aggregating data from multiple systems: ERP, PLM, CRM, suppliers, internal repositories, and more. This challenge demands rigorous governance of master data and robust quality control mechanisms.
Data Lineage Serving Traceability
Data lineage makes it possible to map data flows, document their origin, their transformations, and their distribution across the information system. It ensures transparency in the processes used to construct the data within the product passport, while facilitating audits and anomaly resolution.
A Foundation for Compliance and Sustainability
Complete data traceability is becoming a prerequisite for meeting new regulatory obligations (DPP, CSRD, CSR). Data lineage provides documented proof of data compliance with reporting requirements, while promoting more sustainable and responsible practices.
An Opportunity to Break Down Business Silos
The product passport compels organizations to bring together different functions around a single data repository: procurement, quality, logistics, marketing, CSR, and more. This dynamic reinforces cross-functional data governance, which is often limited to IT or compliance-driven approaches.
Standards and Interoperability: A Critical Issue
The use of standards such as those proposed by GS1 is a key lever for ensuring the interoperability of product passports across an industry or market. This requires alignment not only on data structuring standards but also on associated traceability mechanisms.
A Progressive, High-Value-Added Approach
Implementing a product passport supported by reliable data lineage is a structuring project. It can start with a limited scope (a product range or pilot supply chain) and then expand. The expected benefits are numerous: greater process visibility, reduced risks, improved ESG performance, and increased customer trust.
Conclusion
By combining the product passport and data lineage, companies equip themselves with a powerful lever to govern their data rigorously, meet regulatory requirements, and strengthen their responsibility across the value chain. This approach firmly embeds data at the heart of product strategy.