tieback Academy
Understand Digital Product Passports.
Then know what to do about them.
Free structured learning for manufacturers, SMEs, compliance teams, sustainability professionals and technology leaders.
- 6 Foundations modules
- About 2 hours of core learning
- No prior DPP expertise required
- Free, no account needed
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The Six Module Foundations Journey
Foundations is one path, taken in order. Each module builds on the one before it, ends with a short assessment, and leaves you with something you can use at work rather than a page of notes.
Module 1: What a Digital Product Passport Actually Is
The definition the legislation actually uses, why a passport is not a QR code project, the four layers, and how a scan reaches a record.
Module 2: Whether It Applies to You
Place your organisation in the value chain, separate manufacturer, importer and distributor duties, and read scope without guessing.
Module 3: What a Passport Has to Contain
Data categories, public versus restricted access, and which attributes you already hold against those that have no owner yet.
Module 4: How a Passport Works in Practice
Identifiers, data carriers, resolution, persistence after the sale, and why a published record should not change silently.
Module 5: When It Becomes Mandatory, and Why the Detail Is Missing
How a framework regulation plus a delegated act becomes an obligation, how to read timing signals, and what to do while the detail is unwritten.
Module 6: Capstone, Preparing Your Organisation
Produce a readiness position, find your biggest data gap, sequence your first three actions and brief a decision maker in five sentences.
Ready to begin?
Module 1 starts from zero. Nothing before it is assumed.
Start Module 1What You Will Be Able to Do
Foundations is written around what you can do afterwards, not around what you have read.
Explain a passport accurately to anyone
Describe what a Digital Product Passport is, in the terms the legislation uses, to a colleague, a customer or a board.
Decide whether your products are in scope
Work out which of your product lines are likely to be caught, and in what role your organisation is caught.
List the data a passport needs from you
Separate what you already hold from what sits with a supplier and what currently has no owner at all.
Describe how a passport works end to end
Follow an identifier, a carrier and a resolution step through to the record a customer or inspector actually sees.
Read the timing without guessing
Interpret the framework and delegated act structure, and tell a real deadline apart from an assumed one.
Produce a first readiness position
Write down where you stand, name your biggest gap and sequence the first three actions you should take.
Who It Is For
Foundations assumes no ecodesign law background and no technical background. It is written for the people who get handed this problem, whatever the size of the organisation.
Business owners and SMEs
You have no compliance department and need to know what actually applies to you, and what you can safely leave until later.
Compliance and legal
You need the obligation structure, the roles and the timing read correctly, with the canonical source behind every claim.
Sustainability teams
You already hold much of the material and circularity data and need to see where it lands in a passport.
Product teams
You own the product record and need to know which attributes become public, and which become permanent.
Data and technology
You need identifiers, carriers, resolution and persistence explained precisely enough to design against.
Enterprise programme leaders
You need a defensible readiness position and a sequence of actions you can take to a steering group.
Learn, Apply, Check Understanding
Every lesson follows the same shape, so you always know where you are.
Learn
A short teaching section with clear objectives, pointing to the canonical Knowledge Base article that holds the authoritative text.
Apply
A worked example on a realistic product, then a short exercise you do against your own products rather than a hypothetical one.
Check understanding
A knowledge check with immediate feedback and unlimited attempts, then a module assessment at a pass mark of 80 percent.
Academy and Knowledge
Knowledge is where you look something up. Academy is where you learn the subject systematically.
The division is permanent. No fact is ever moved behind the Academy. Every lesson sends you to the canonical article for the authoritative text, and that article stays open to everyone with no account. If a lesson and an article ever disagree, the article is correct and the lesson is a defect.
Useful entry points into the reference layer: the Knowledge Base, the Glossary for any term you meet in a lesson, and tieback Frameworks for the named models the lessons teach you to apply.
Completion
When all six modules are complete, the Foundations completion page confirms what you have covered and gives you a tieback Academy Foundations completion acknowledgement.
That acknowledgement records course completion. It is training, not an accreditation. It is not recognised, endorsed or issued by the European Union or any regulatory authority, and it does not certify products, conformity or compliance.
Progress and knowledge check scores are stored in your own browser. There is no account and no sign in, which also means progress does not follow you to another device and clearing site data clears it. Accounts and portable progress arrive with the wider Academy release.
What Comes After Foundations
Five further paths are specified and will follow Foundations: Implementation Practitioner, Data and Architecture, Compliance and Regulation, Standards and Interoperability, and Governance and Operations, plus sector add-ons for batteries, construction products, textiles and electronics. None of them is open yet, and none of them will ever paywall a fact.
Start Foundations, free
Six modules, about two hours, no account and no prior DPP expertise required.
Start Foundations, freePrefer to see the whole path first? Open the Foundations path overview.