Digital Product Passports and Green Lean: A Conceptual Framework for Environmental Information Continuity and Attribution Across the Product Lifecycle

Green Lean and Sustainable Value Stream Mapping (Sus-VSM) rely on environmental information to identify waste and support improvement. This information remains primarily attached to processes and measurement points within the mapped value stream, limiting its association with an identifiable product across organizational and lifecycle boundaries. Digital Product Passports (DPPs), developed largely in response to circularity requirements, provide capabilities for maintaining product-linked information across lifecycle stages. This paper develops a conceptual framework synthesizing the Green Lean, Sus-VSM, and DPP studies. Sus-VSM research establishes the process-level information boundary, while representative studies selected through an earlier systematic review characterize five DPP capabilities. The analysis separates within-boundary information functions from three dependent boundary-crossing properties: continuity, traceability, and attribution. Mapping the five capabilities onto these properties supports three propositions. DPP capabilities can enable information continuity (P1). Continuity is necessary but insufficient for defensible environmental attribution, which also requires traceability, semantic interoperability, and governance and provenance (P2). When continuity and attribution are established, Green Lean decision-making can incorporate product-linked information from additional organizations and lifecycle stages (P3). The framework specifies a mechanism connecting process-level Green Lean information with product-linked DPP information and supports future empirical testing.