The Digital Product Passport is coming: what does it mean for windows and doors?

Imagine a situation that is far from unusual in the window and door industry.

An investor, customer or distributor asks for information about a window delivered several years ago. Which profile system was used? Which glazing? Which spacer? Which hardware? What were the dimensions and configuration? Which declared performance characteristics applied to that product type, and which documentation accompanied it?

In most well-organised factories, much of that information almost certainly exists.

The real question is — where?

Some of it is stored in the production software. Some is in the PDF quotation. Some is buried in the profile supplier's technical documentation. Glass specifications are kept somewhere else. The sales team has the latest quotation in an email. The installer may have photographs from the site on a phone.

And if the customer changed the colour, glazing, hardware or even the construction itself during the sales process, an even more important question appears:

which configuration was actually sold and manufactured in the end?

This way of working has been manageable for many companies until now. In the years ahead, it will become increasingly impractical.

CPR 2024 changes the way Europe looks at construction product data

With the new Construction Products Regulation — Regulation (EU) 2024/3110, or CPR 2024, the European Union has established a new regulatory framework for construction products.

Most provisions of the Regulation have applied since 8 January 2026, while certain provisions entered into application earlier or will apply at a later stage.

One of the most significant changes is the future Construction Digital Product Passport — DPP.

It is important, however, to distinguish between what already exists and what is still to come.

Under the new CPR, the Digital Product Passport is not yet an operational requirement for every window and door currently placed on the market. The Regulation establishes the legal framework, while the European Commission still needs to establish the detailed Digital Product Passport system for construction products through a delegated act.

According to the European Commission's current indicative timetable, the delegated act concerning the DPP system for construction products is planned for the second quarter of 2027. The CPR then provides for an 18-month period following the entry into force of that act before manufacturers are required to make the Digital Product Passport available through the system. For this reason, it is not yet possible to give a reliable single implementation date for individual product groups.

There is also a transition from the former CPR 305/2011 to the new framework. Harmonised standards applicable on 8 January 2026 continue to operate under the previous CPR until the European Commission withdraws or replaces them as part of the transition to the new regulatory system.

In other words:

the requirement for windows has not appeared overnight, but the direction of travel is no longer in doubt.

A DPP is not a QR code

The easiest way to imagine a Digital Product Passport is as a QR code attached to a window.

That is also an oversimplified picture of what is actually changing.

A QR code, or another data carrier, merely provides access to the information.

The important part is the data behind it.

CPR 2024 provides that the Digital Product Passport may — and where required must — bring together the Declaration of Performance and Conformity (DoPC), general product information, instructions and safety information, technical documentation, relevant markings, unique identifiers and documentation required under other EU legislation.

This is where the more important change begins.

Where applicable, data in the system is expected to be structured, searchable, transferable and machine-readable, based on open and interoperable standards and without dependence on a single software provider — in other words, without vendor lock-in.

Put simply:

A human can read a PDF.

Structured data can also be understood by other information systems.

The passport is linked to a product type — and this is where custom windows become interesting

Precision matters here.

CPR 2024 links the Digital Product Passport to the product type and its unique identification code. The Regulation therefore does not, by itself, state that every physical window must necessarily have a completely independent “passport for each individual unit”.

The window and door industry, however, has a particular problem.

A window is very often manufactured for a specific project.

Dimensions change. The number and size of sashes change. Glazing, profiles, hardware, construction, performance characteristics and other parameters can all change from one order to another.

For this reason, EuroWindoor, the European association representing the window, door and facade sector, has warned that the existing concept of a “product type” can result in an enormous number of different product types and declarations for highly configurable products. Its documents point out that, for made-to-measure windows, changes to certain characteristics can in practice create a situation similar to declaring almost every individual configuration separately.

That makes the issue far more significant for the window and door sector than for an industry manufacturing a million identical products to a single specification.

A window is not a product name. A window is a configuration.

In sales, a product description often looks something like this:

“PVC window, 140 × 140, white, triple glazing.”

That may be sufficient for a conversation with the customer.

For serious technical traceability, it is not.

Behind such a description may be a specific profile system, a particular frame and sash combination, a particular glazing build-up, a Ug value, spacer type, hardware system, opening method, reinforcement, extension profiles and a range of other parameters that affect the product and its declared performance.

One of the most important consequences of the digitalisation of regulation is therefore surprisingly simple:

a product must first become a well-organised set of data before it can eventually receive a reliable Digital Product Passport.

If information originates in five different systems, if it is manually copied from the quotation into production and then copied again from production into documentation, the DPP at the end of the process does not solve the underlying problem.

It simply makes the problem more visible.

The biggest problem is a broken data chain

Consider a typical window sales process.

The customer sends the dimensions. The salesperson prepares a quotation.

The customer changes the glazing. Two days later, they ask for another colour. The salesperson prepares a new version.

The quotation is accepted. Someone enters the configuration into the production software again.

Production manufactures the element. Installation receives a work order.

Photographs, additional measurements or notes are created on site.

Every time a person reads one document and manually enters the data into another system, the digital chain is broken.

This is not a criticism of production software. Serious window and door manufacturing systems solve highly complex technical and production tasks.

The problem begins when production is digitalised, but the process surrounding production is not.

If a quotation is created in Excel, a dealer sends an order as a PDF, the sales department manages the customer in a third system and installers communicate through messaging apps, the company does not really have one digital process.

It has several digital islands.

The European window industry is already warning about the problem

This is not a theoretical issue invented by software companies.

Throughout 2026, EuroWindoor repeatedly raised practical concerns with the European Commission regarding implementation of the new CPR in the window and door sector.

The industry is unusual because a large share of it consists of small and medium-sized businesses and craft-based manufacturers, with a high proportion of custom-made and project-specific products.

EuroWindoor therefore explicitly supports the use of verified software tools for automated calculations and declarations, allowing regulatory requirements to be implemented without disproportionate administrative burden. In 2026, industry associations even proposed an additional AVS 4+ model that would allow broader use of verified software for variable technical characteristics of windows and doors.

That is an important signal.

Digitalisation in this industry is no longer only about whether a quotation takes five minutes or twenty minutes to prepare.

It is also becoming a tool for managing technical documentation and compliance.

The DPP infrastructure already exists — but that does not mean DPPs are already mandatory for windows

On 20 July 2026, the European Commission launched the central Digital Product Passport Registry and a testing environment.

The Registry enables the registration of unique identifiers and metadata, and API access is also envisaged so that companies can connect their own information systems to the DPP infrastructure.

This is an important milestone.

But it is not the same as requiring a window manufacturer to register every product today.

The first concrete mandatory implementation of the DPP system will apply to certain categories of batteries from February 2027, while other product groups will enter the system gradually. For construction products, the relevant regulatory steps are still ahead.

Window and door companies therefore do not need to “build their own DPP” today.

They need to organise the data from which tomorrow's DPP can be created.

What about manufacturers in Serbia?

CPR 2024 is European Union legislation and does not apply directly as domestic law to a product placed exclusively on the Serbian market.

In Serbia, this field is governed by the Law on Construction Products (“Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia”, No. 83/2018) and the relevant technical regulations.

The Institute for Standardization of Serbia explicitly states that the European CPR does not apply directly in the Republic of Serbia. Instead, the concept of the previous CPR was incorporated into Serbian legislation through the Law on Construction Products.

For windows and external pedestrian doors, Serbia has adopted SRPS EN 14351-1:2017, which defines the performance characteristics of this product group.

A Serbian manufacturer placing a product on the European Union market, however, enters a different regulatory framework.

EU requirements apply to products placed on the Union market regardless of whether they were manufactured within the EU or imported from a third country. Once DPP requirements become applicable to a particular group of construction products, they will also be relevant to Serbian manufacturers placing those products on the EU market.

For Serbian manufacturers exporting to Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia or other EU markets, this is therefore not a distant Brussels issue.

What can a manufacturer do today?

There is little sense in a company trying to predict the final DPP format for windows in 2026.

There is a great deal of sense in getting the foundations right.

The same data should not be entered several times. Dimensions, system, glazing, hardware and construction should be created once and then reused throughout quotation, ordering, production and documentation.

A document and data are not the same thing. A PDF quotation is a document produced by a system. The source of truth should be the structured record from which that PDF was created.

A company needs to know what was actually sold. Today's price list or today's system configuration is not evidence of what applied three years ago. For traceability, the relevant information is the configuration snapshot from the time of sale.

Components should be linked to technical data. Profiles, glazing, hardware and other materials will increasingly carry structured technical and environmental information.

Data must not be trapped in a single application. The new CPR deliberately moves towards interoperable formats and explicitly seeks to avoid vendor lock-in for DPP data.

These are good business practices even without a Digital Product Passport.

The DPP simply makes it clearer why they will become increasingly important.

Where does Okvir.io fit into this process?

Okvir.io is not currently a system that makes a manufacturer compliant with future DPP requirements simply by generating a document.

It would not be credible to make such a claim while the specific rules for applying the system to construction products are still being developed.

But the foundation on which the system is built is moving in a direction that will become increasingly important.

When a salesperson configures a window in Okvir.io, the system does not only remember the final price.

It can already know the dimensions, construction, profile system, geometry, glazing, hardware and other components of the specific item.

When the quotation changes, the configuration that actually applied at the time of sale can be retained. As the product moves towards production and installation, the same data can travel with it rather than being entered again.

The next logical step is to link components with technical characteristics, declarations, certificates and other documentation.

This solution can become one of the reliable sources of data from which a DPP is created, as well as the layer that passes those data to manufacturing software, documentation systems or a future DPP service.

Your software for production preparation and quotation generation becomes a single source of truth.

You are not preparing a QR code. You are preparing the data.

We still do not know every practical detail of how the Digital Product Passport will be applied to windows and doors.

Standardisation work, delegated acts and discussions between the European Commission and industry are still under way, particularly around how to make the new system workable in a sector where practically every order can be different.

But the direction is clear.

The construction product of the future will not be accompanied only by a physical item.

It will also be accompanied by an increasingly rich, structured and verifiable set of data.

A company that already creates those data through a controlled digital process will face a much smaller challenge when the new requirements become operational.

A company that depends on Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, emails and the knowledge of a handful of key people will first have to reconstruct its own information process — and only then start thinking about the Digital Product Passport.

One of the key questions window and door manufacturers should be asking in 2026 is:

“When that requirement arrives, will I know where every piece of data behind that code comes from?”