Six DPP Implementation Realities for Pro A/V, Lighting and Power Manufacturers

Most manufacturers in pro A/V, lighting, power and energy-related product categories know that Digital Product Passport obligations are coming. Fewer have confronted what implementation actually involves.

KPMG’s European DPP Readiness Survey found that 97% of organisations surveyed had general awareness of DPP requirements. Only 33% demonstrated genuine operational understanding of what compliance would demand. That gap is where most manufacturers currently sit.

What follows are six implementation realities drawn from the JRC DPP methodology, KPMG’s readiness survey, and direct engagement learnings.

1. DPP is a cross-functional data programme

Roughly 80% of DPP delivery is data management across the organisation. Only around 20% is the customer-facing surface. Yet 46% of organisations have assigned DPP solely to their sustainability team, and 23% have no designated owner at all. Compliance, ERP, product master data, documentation engineering, CRM, warehouse and production all need to converge.

Q: Who in your business currently owns DPP readiness, and do they have the cross-functional authority to drive it?

2. Fix serial-level traceability first

Most mid-sized manufacturers discover they cannot reliably answer: what do we know about this specific unit? 

Common gaps include:

• No unified serial-level lookup across ERP, MES and quality systems

• Manufacturing dates inferred from production-order timestamps rather than recorded per unit

• Compliance documentation held at model level, not variant level

• Spreadsheets still doing load-bearing work in unit-level recovery

DPP forces these gaps into the open. Resolve them for in-scope SKUs before any pilot goes live.

Q: Can your business reliably link a passport to a specific physical unit?

3. Close the end-customer visibility gap

Manufacturers selling through distribution typically see well under 1% of their end users. DPP creates a direct channel to close that gap but only if there is a genuine commercial reason to scan and register. Without one, scan rates collapse and DPP becomes a pure compliance cost. 

Extended warranty, firmware unlocks, registered-owner support, and spare-parts entitlement are all options worth considering. Deciding early whether your  registered-customer data lives in your CRM or ERP has implications for data architecture and long-term commercial value.

Q: What would give your end customers a real reason to scan?

4. Don’t let DPP stop the production line 

The DPP stack must never become a live dependency of the production line. Label printing, serialisation and passport generation need to tolerate outages through asynchronous queueing, local caching of identifiers, and the ability to print and ship without a successful round-trip to a cloud service. This is one of the most common points of failure in early DPP pilots.

Q: If your DPP platform went offline, could your production line continue uninterrupted?

5. Plan labelling as a multi-year transition

A realistic labelling roadmap runs through three phases:

• Wedge: generic QR added via insert or on-box print, existing barcodes untouched

• Pilot: product-linked DPP QR added alongside existing barcodes, dual-labelling preserved

• Cutover: dual-labelling sustained until existing channel stock flows through - typically 12 to 24 months

Resolve two questions before the pilot phase: 

1. Can a single box-level QR resolve to multiple contained units such as kits or multi-packs?

2. Is cutover timing coordinated with distributors who have their own scanning workflows?

Q: Have you mapped your labelling transition across your full distribution chain?

6. Start the data work now

For energy-related products, the ESPR delegated act is expected mid-2027, with 18 months from adoption to mandatory compliance. Pre-committing to a permanent architecture before the framework is clear carries real risk; 61% of organisations are still undecided on build versus buy, and that caution is rational. 

But the manufacturers who will struggle in 2027 and 2028 are not those who delayed their platform decision, it will be those who delayed their data work.

Q: Have you started the cross-functional data work (serial-level traceability, supplier data collection, master data stabilisation) that any DPP platform will sit on top of?

About TAZAAR

TAZAAR’s AssetID platform is built around the principles the ESPR framework formalises; item-level identification, persistent lifecycle data, physical data carriers, and structured digital product passports with full audit trails.

We work with manufacturers in pro A/V, lighting, power and energy-related product categories on data readiness, supply chain alignment, and DPP infrastructure, including the discovery work that surfaces what actually exists in a business’s data landscape before compliance decisions are made.

To discuss where your business stands, the team at TAZAAR would be happy to help.