Circularity Needs a Product Record That Can Support Repair

Repair, refurbishment and a service business stall in the same place: the product record cannot say what the product is made of, which part fits, or what can be reused. That is the point Stephan Spijkers and Ruud de Bruijckere made in this session.

Speakers:

• Stephan Spijkers, Co-Founder, PIMvendors.com
• Ruud de Bruijckere, Vice-CEO, Signifikant

What the session argued:

• A circular model tries to cut waste through repair and refurbishment, among other routes. The record has to be able to support the route you actually sell.
• Aftermarket service depends on the same record. If the spare, the manual and the compatibility are missing from the PIM, the service offer is a promise the warehouse cannot keep.
• Gorenje was the named example of a service-based model.
• The move takes cooperation across the companies involved, and tools that can hold the extra attributes.

The Digital Product Passport is the regulatory form of the same demand. The DPP guide sets out who needs a passport and which fields it asks the PIM for. Packaging claims sit in that same model. PPWR and product data treats them as a data-design problem, not as a policy paragraph. None of it holds if nobody owns the attribute. That ownership is the subject of product data quality and governance.