Product passports and supply chain provenance

The short answer

What does this use case involve?

A product passport connects a product identifier with origin, composition, certifications and lifecycle events. Shared records help organizations exchange evidence, but a reliable scan or ledger entry does not prove the physical item itself is authentic.

Where the current process breaks down

Counterfeits, fragmented suppliers and weak audit trails make product trust hard to prove. Useful for luxury goods, pharmaceuticals, food traceability, batteries, certificates of origin and recall workflows.

From input to outcome

How does the workflow operate?

The following is an illustrative operating model, not a claim about a specific deployment. Ownership, approvals and exception handling should be agreed before implementation.

1. 01

   Identify the item

   Choose product, batch or serialized-item granularity. Link identifiers to ERP records and a physical label that suits the product's lifecycle.

2. 02

   Collect supplier evidence

   Request structured origin and material data with supplier credentials. Record provenance, expiry and verification of certificates.

3. 03

   Record custody events

   Authenticate actors at manufacture, shipment, repair and reuse. Flag missing transitions and implausible events for investigation.

4. 04

   Expose permitted information

   Give customers, regulators and service partners different views. Support corrections and recalls without rewriting historical accountability.

Build the operating stack

Which infrastructure is needed?

These capabilities may sit inside an existing system, a specialist service or an integrated platform. Map each one to a responsible owner; do not assume a single vendor covers every function.

• Digital product passports
• Supplier credentials
• IoT or scan events
• Compliance reporting

Design for the exceptions

What can go wrong?

A bounded first deployment

How should a team start?

Start with one workflow and named operational owners. A pilot should show that the process works through exceptions, not just that a transaction can succeed once.

1. Choose one product family and a manageable supplier group.
2. Agree on data fields, access rights and correction ownership.
3. Test copied labels, expired certificates and a recall.
4. Validate results against physical inventory and existing records.

What should the pilot measure?

• Supplier evidence completeness
• Time to trace a recalled batch
• Unresolved identifier and custody anomalies

Set a baseline and acceptance thresholds before choosing technology. Include support effort and failed cases in the comparison, and validate the result with the teams that will operate it.

Procurement questions

What should you ask vendors?

• How does the identifier stay attached to the physical product?
• Who validates supplier claims?
• Which fields are public and which are commercially restricted?

Request evidence from comparable workflows, a clear responsibility matrix, integration documentation and an export or exit plan. Confirm current capabilities directly rather than relying on a category listing.

Relevant vendor directories

Common questions