Achieving a Sustainable Economy with Digital Product Passports
a pyrometallurgical treatment at very high temperatures . The best separation process differs from producer to producer . By design , the Supplier Knowledge Base handles information with different levels of detail . Thus , the retrievable disassembling , recycling and reparability information differs in its level of detail accordingly .
2 . The production processes ( Process ) implicitly provide information about the hierarchy of the DPPs based on the modeled input products ( InputProduct ) and output products ( OutputProduct ). Partial aspects of DPPs can be derived using this modeling option , such as missing DPPs along a Li-ion battery supply chain ( Figure 5-1 ). This facilitates the creation and completion of DPPs along supply chains . A missing DPP for the battery cells can be derived from the ontology since the input products for a battery are known ( battery cells , battery management system and battery case ).
3 . Inferring supply chains from DPP information is another possibility . The Supplier Knowledge Base makes it possible to infer the individual elements of the supply chain from the DPP ( ProductPassport ) and thus to infer the entire supply chain . This is possible because the DPP contains product details ( Product ), which in turn contain manufacturer information ( Enterprise ). With this modeling option , the individual supply chain elements ( SupplyChainElement ) can be derived from the DPP . As a supply chain ( SupplyChain ) consists of several supply chain elements , it is possible to derive complete supply chains ( cf . section 5.2 ).
Thus , missing data in the supply chain description can be filled in by the DPP and missing supply chain elements can be inferred . If the DPP for lithium is available in the exemplary supply chain for Li-ion batteries ( Figure 5-1 ), it can be inferred that there is at least one lithium supplier in the supply chain and which suppliers are supplied with lithium . Sustainability information such as human rights , conflict minerals and country of origin can also be derived from the DPP . This sustainability information is relevant for compliance with legislation such as the German Supply Chain Act [ 11 ].
4 . Processes can be derived from the relationship between DPP and sub-DPP and hence DPP hierarchies ( cf . Figure 5-2 ), analogously to point 2 . The DPP information ( ProductPassport ) describes the output product ( Product ) and the sub-DPP information the respective input products ( Product ). Thus , it can be assumed that the derived process is part of a factory ( Factory ) that owns the DPP . For example , an assembly process can be derived from thDPP for the Li-ion battery and its sub-DPP . The output product is the Li-ion battery . The input products are the battery management system , the battery cells , and the battery case ( cf . Figure 5-1 ).
5 . As described in section 4.1 , each DPP has a persistent unique identifier . Given such an identifier , DPP hierarchies or supply chains as well as process descriptions in the Supplier Knowledge Base can be analyzed to find products with the same DPP identifiers and consequently link the associated products to the same DPP ( i . e . an ‘ equals relation ’). This
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