Lesson 1: The Categories of Passport Data
Lesson 1: The Categories of Passport Data
Module 3, Lesson 1 of 3. About 9 minutes.
Orientation
The question “what goes in the passport” is usually asked as if the answer is a single list, and that framing is the first thing that has to go. A passport carries several kinds of information that behave nothing alike: some of it is stable for the life of the product, some of it changes every batch, some of it you already hold and some of it you will have to ask a supplier for the first time. Treat it as one list and you will collect the easy attributes twice and never notice the hard ones are missing.
Sorting passport content into categories is not an academic exercise. It is how you find out, in a single afternoon, which parts of the work are a data project and which parts are a procurement programme with a much longer lead time.
From Module 2: when a role in your value chain carries a passport duty, does that mean your organisation already holds all the data the duty requires?
Show the answer
No. Module 2 established that carrying the duty and holding the data are separate questions: the duty tells you who is accountable, not where the underlying attributes currently live. This module picks up exactly that gap.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson you should be able to:
- M3-O1Classify passport data into its categories rather than treating it as one undifferentiated list.
Reading the Six Categories
The Product Information Readiness Model groups everything a passport might carry into six categories: product identity, product composition, compliance information, sustainability information, lifecycle information, and supply chain information. The categories are not a checklist that every product must satisfy in full. They are a lens: a way of asking, for each kind of content, where it currently lives, who owns it and how ready it is to publish.
Read the canonical article below with one question in mind for each category: if I had to produce this today, would I be assembling data or would I be starting a request to someone who has never been asked. The two categories that usually answer “assembling” are identity and compliance, because that information already exists to support other obligations. The categories that usually answer “starting a request” are composition, sustainability and supply chain, because they depend on what is held one or more tiers upstream. Lifecycle information sits in the middle: it typically exists, but as a manual rather than as structured fields.
The common misreading is to treat the six categories as six equally weighted boxes to fill in parallel, or worse, to treat “we do not yet have a field list” as a reason no work can start. Every category can be assessed for readiness today, category by category, without knowing the final list a delegated act will eventually specify. The categories tell you where to look and who to ask. They do not tell you the exact fields, and no product is required to carry all six in full: scope for a given product is set by the delegated act or regulation that applies to it.
A tieback framework that groups Digital Product Passport content into six categories of information, so an organisation can assess where each category originates, who owns it, and how ready it is to publish, without waiting for a final regulatory field list.
Use it when you are scoping a passport programme for the first time, briefing a steering group on where the real gaps sit, or being asked to estimate how much of the work is already done.
Where it fails: it tells you what kind of information exists and roughly how ready each category is. It does not tell you the exact fields a specific product must carry, it does not resolve which of several conflicting sources is authoritative, and it says nothing about who may see which category. Do not use it as a substitute for the delegated act once one exists for your product group.
Read the six categories in detail, then the section explaining that no product requires all six in full. That second section is the guard rail against over-collecting.
Read: What Information Does a Digital Product Passport Contain? (15 min read)
Sections that carry this lesson:
- The Product Information Readiness Model
- The Six Categories in Detail
- Does Every Product Require All of This Information?
The article is the source of record. Where this lesson and the article differ, the article is correct.
Identity: model, variant and serial numbering for the trimmer and, separately, for the battery pack, which needs its own identifier because it is a removable component with its own regime.
Composition: the housing polymer and the battery cell chemistry, both of which sit with the contract manufacturer and have never been requested in a purchase specification.
Compliance: the declaration of conformity and test reports already exist for market access. They exist as documents, not as structured fields, which is a different problem to solve.
Sustainability: nothing at product level exists yet. Group level sustainability reporting exists, but it answers a different question to “what is true of this specific trimmer”.
Lifecycle: a printed manual covers maintenance and battery replacement. The content is there; it has never been split into addressable fields.
Supply chain: country of manufacture is known. Chain of custody for the battery cells beyond the immediate contract manufacturer is not.
Take one product line and write one line per category: what exists, in what form, and who currently holds it. Do not try to fill every category completely. The exercise succeeds if it tells you which two or three categories are the genuine gap, because those are the ones with procurement lead time attached.
Knowledge Check
4 questions. Feedback is immediate, nothing is graded, and this does not gate your progress.
Takeaways
- Passport content sorts into six categories: identity, composition, compliance, sustainability, lifecycle and supply chain.
- No product requires all six categories in full: scope is set per product group.
- Identity and compliance are usually assembly problems; composition, sustainability and supply chain are usually requests to someone outside the organisation.
- Readiness in every category can be assessed today, without a final field list.
If you remember one thing: sort before you collect, because the categories tell you which gaps are a data task and which are a procurement programme.
Sources
This lesson draws on What Information Does a Digital Product Passport Contain?, sections The Product Information Readiness Model, The Six Categories in Detail, and Does Every Product Require All of This Information.
Module 3 · Lesson 1 of 3
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