TRIMIT Digital Product Passport

Fresh Perspectives on Digital Product Passports: Students Take on a TRIMIT Challenge

Five students and recent graduates from different academic backgrounds joined forces to explore TRIMIT's Digital Product Passport solution. The result? Fresh perspectives, valuable customer insights and concrete recommendations for further development.

As new EU requirements for sustainability, transparency and circularity take shape, Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are becoming increasingly important.

TRIMIT has already developed a Digital Product Passport solution built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. But with legislation still evolving, there are plenty of questions to explore.

That made DPP an interesting challenge for a group of students and recent graduates to take on.

Bringing Education and Business Together

The collaboration was part of Data-driven Circularity for New Partnerships, a three-year initiative involving the University of Southern Denmark, Aarhus University, the IT University of Copenhagen, Design School Kolding and FORCE Technology.

The “Data-Driven Circularity in New Partnerships” project is funded by the Danish Board of Business Development through Virksomhedsudvikling Danmark.

The initiative brings students, graduates and companies together to explore real business challenges related to digitalisation, sustainability and circularity.

For TRIMIT, the challenge was to assess how well the existing DPP solution meets anticipated EU requirements, identify potential gaps and explore opportunities for improvement.

Over an intensive sprint, five participants with different academic backgrounds examined EU regulations, tested TRIMIT's solution, researched competing solutions and interviewed a TRIMIT customer.

The team was mentored by Ona Pirol and Rikke Lauritsen from the University of Southern Denmark throughout the project.

Bringing education and business together! Students and recent graduates joined forces with TRIMIT to explore Digital Product Passports, bringing fresh perspectives and valuable ideas for future development.

Fresh Eyes on a Real Business Challenge

For many of the participants, Digital Product Passports were an entirely new subject. Working across disciplines brought different perspectives to the project – from legislation and technology to customer needs.

For Antonia Vasiu, a Data Science master's student at the University of Southern Denmark, working with a real company was a valuable experience.

“At university, we learn different approaches, but working with a real company means dealing with complexity and uncertainty. You need to understand the business context and the actual problem before you can start finding solutions,” Antonia explains.

Anita Tran, a recent graduate in IT Product Design, particularly valued the opportunity to understand the people who would use the solution.

“It's not enough to know what the legislation requires or what is technically possible. You also need to understand whether the solution creates value for the people using it,” she says.

For both, the project was an opportunity to put their knowledge into practice, learn from other disciplines and contribute to a real business challenge.

Valuable Input for Future Development

At the end of the sprint, the team presented its findings and recommendations to TRIMIT.

Richard Lindberg, Head of Solutions at TRIMIT, sees great value in the collaboration:

“It's been really valuable to have a group of people look at our solution with fresh eyes. They've challenged some of our assumptions, highlighted areas we can improve and given us useful input for our continued development of Digital Product Passports.”

The students' research confirmed that TRIMIT already has a strong foundation, with much of the relevant product and sustainability information managed directly within the ERP system. They also identified opportunities to improve data quality, strengthen traceability and make it easier for companies to collect and manage information from suppliers.

Their findings provide valuable input for TRIMIT's continued development, with the overall recommendation to make Digital Product Passports an even more integrated part of customers' existing business processes.

And the collaboration continues, with Antonia exploring selected challenges further together with TRIMIT.

Relatednews