Joint Forces for Digital Product Passport (DPP)

About the OPC Foundation

The OPC Foundation has been promoting the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standard since 1996. As an advocate and steward of these specifications, the OPC Foundation's mission is to help vendors, end users, and software developers achieve interoperability of their manufacturing and automation resources. The OPC Foundation's mission is to provide the best specifications, technologies, processes, and certification to ensure interoperability between different vendors and different platforms securely and reliably from embedded systems to the enterprise cloud. The Foundation supports over 1000 members from around the world in industrial automation, IT, IoT, IIoT, M2M, Industry 4.0, building automation, machine tools, pharmaceuticals, petrochemical and smart energy in achieving this goal. 

About VDMA

The VDMA represents 3600 German and European companies in the mechanical and plant engineering industry. The industry stands for innovation, export orientation and medium-sized companies. The companies employ a total of around 3 million people in the EU-27, more than 1.2 million of them in Germany alone. This makes the mechanical and plant engineering industry the largest employer among the capital goods industries, both in the EU-27 and in Germany. It is estimated that the sector generates a turnover of around 910 billion euros in the European Union. Around 80 per cent of the machines sold in the EU come from a production plant in the single market.

About ZVEI

The ZVEI represents the common interests of the electrical and digital industry and the associated service companies in Germany and at international level. The association has more than 1,100 member companies, and 170 employees work in the ZVEI Group. The industry employs 900,000 workers in Germany (as of April 2024). In 2023, its turnover was around 238,1 billion euros. The electrical and digital industry is one of the most innovative economic sectors in Germany. One fifth of the industry's turnover is accounted for by product innovations. Every third innovation in the manufacturing industry as a whole gets its original impetus here. Almost a quarter of all R&D expenditure in the manufacturing sector in Germany comes from the electrical and digital industry. Every year, the sector spends around 20 billion euros on R&D and more than seven billion euros on investments.