Integration of the Digital Product Passport in the Configuration and Data Management process for the aerospace industry

All industrial sectors are paying increasing attention to environmental regulations, with the aim of minimizing the impact that their activities and products have. Leonardo S.p.A. – Electronics Division industrial policies pursue this same objective through the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals along the whole lifecycle of the product, starting from the design and development up to the management, maintenance of the in-service product and disposal. To this end, the thesis activity – which has been conducted in collaboration with Leonardo S.p.A. – Electronics Division – started from the study of the discipline of Configuration Management and of the available literature on the topic of the Digital Product Passport. The aim was then to understand how to integrate the Digital Product Passport, a tool aimed at collecting both technical and ecological information through the lifecycle of all the components and key materials of the product itself, within the Configuration Management framework. Altogether the set of passports of all the components of the complex system-product will form the passport of the entire system, likewise, closely related to its Digital Twin (DT), that will accompany it throughout its life so as to achieve an accurate traceability of its state, linked both to its implementation phases and to the methods of use. In particular this work of thesis, starting from the choice of a product of application, analyzed the actors involved in the data collection and sharing processes, the information of interest for the specific application, and other relevant aspects to understand how a Digital Product Passport could have been integrated in the Configuration Management framework, within the context of the company, on a sonic system for helicopters.