Episode 15: Digital Twins for a Sustainable Future: Inga Müller on WAGO’s Digital Product Passport Journey

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Inga Müller, Strategy Manager Digital Twin & Data Lifecycle at WAGO.

Inga is a passionate shaper of the future who believes that innovative technologies and new ways of thinking can help us create a better world. As part of WAGO’s Smart Data team, she plays a key role in defining the strategic direction of the company’s Digital Twin initiatives. With a background in mechanical engineering, Inga bridges the gap between the product lifecycle and the data lifecycle, connecting the physical and virtual worlds. Her mission is clear: to ensure these two dimensions work hand in hand—unlocking their full potential and delivering maximum value.

In this conversation, Inga shares why collaboration and data transparency are key to driving real digital transformation, and how a strategic, people-centered approach can make technology truly impactful.

Here are some of the key topics we explore in this episode:

⚉ The Meaning and Vision Behind the Digital Twin
⚉ Understanding the Digital Product Passport (DPP)
⚉ From Requirements to Systems: Building the Foundation Right
⚉ The “Big Three” Systems at WAGO
⚉ Collaboration Across the Organization
⚉ Advice for Organizations: Start Early


CONNECT WITH INGA: 
⚉ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inga-m%C3%BCller/ 

CONNECT WITH SHARE PLM:
Website: https://shareplm.com/ 


Join us every month to listen to fascinating interviews, where we cover a wide array of topics, from actionable tips, to personal experiences, to strategies that you can implement into your PLM strategy.

If you have an interesting story to share and want to join the conversation, contact us and let's chat. We can't wait to hear from you!

Transcript

[00:00:11] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Share PLM podcast. I'm Beatriz Gonzalez, CEO of Share PLM, and joining me as always is our wonderful co-host, Jos Voskuil. So Jos welcome, how are you? And who is with us today?

[00:00:27] JOS VOSKUIL:
Good morning, Bea. It's a wonderful day and it's going to be an interesting session today for me in particular because our guest, Inga Müller, who is a strategy manager, digital twin at Wago. And she's nominated for the category sustainability impact from the Siemens Realized Excellence Award. So sustainability, digital twin, and also digital product passports are all words that make me tick.

So welcome Inga for this podcast, we are very happy to have you in this episode. And first of all, please introduce yourself to the listeners and tell us a little bit about your passion for PLM.

[00:01:01] INGA MULLER:
Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited to have this podcast today. My name is Inga Müller. I'm working as strategy manager at Digital Twin for WAGO. And in this role, I'm responsible for the strategic development of the digital twin at WAGO.

So that means that I have a look at new technologies. I have a look at new regulations in this context, and I validate these technologies and regulations and then implement them at WAGO.

[00:01:33] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay, so first of all, I think, who is Wago?

[00:01:37] INGA MULLER:
Who's WAGO?

[00:01:37] JOS VOSKUIL:
Can you tell us something about the company and what are they doing?

[00:01:40] INGA MULLER:
Yeah. WAGO is a company based in Minden in Germany. That's somewhere between Hanover and Bielefeld. We are mainly producing electrical connection products, I would call it. So a lot of people who have to do with electricity already know WAGO because we have little splicing connectors that connects the electricity in your house or in buildings. And also we do some home automation. So that is our field of work.

[00:02:12] JOS VOSKUIL:
And then the word digital twin. Where is the digital twin in WAGO?

[00:02:17] INGA MULLER:
Yeah, it's everywhere. The digital twin for us means a lot of things. I think the word digital twin is not that standardized. We use our digital twins in a lot of ways. For example, we use it internally in our systems like PLM or ERP to control our processes to optimize processes and to ensure the quality of the product in the production, for example. But we also use our digital twins for our customers because our customers can also automate things or need information by other digital twin, for example, for sustainability reasons or for production planning or for the engineering.

So the digital twin is everywhere, I would call it. Everybody has to do with digital twins. So, it's a whole concept I would call it.

[00:03:16] JOS VOSKUIL:
And I understand that the concept of digital twin is very different for different type of companies. But also, as we mentioned, we were talking about the digital product passport, and I think that's one of the best examples of a digital twin of a product. So, here we are close.

So we mentioned already digital product passports. Is it your favorite hobby and what does it mean for a company to have a digital passport for their products? Can you tell us something about that?

[00:03:43] INGA MULLER:
Yeah. The digital product passport is a kind of a digital twin. The digital product passport is originated in an EU regulation. The ESPR, the Equal Design for Sustainable Products Regulation. I've said this name so many times, so now that I can say bar. And it basically means that we have to collect data to products.

Also, we have to create a digital twin for products, publish these information, and then add a QR code on a product, so that when a customer scans this QR code on the product, it directly gets to this digital product passport or the digital twin. We all know this, I would say in the case of B2C products because when we buy a new phone or buy a new dishwasher or anything, there's always a QR code that leads to some more information.

And it's the same for companies now, I would call it. And the main goal of the digital product Passport is to enable sustainability because we give the customer the most important information about how can I repair my product, are there critical materials in it, how do I dispose it? How do I operate it and things like that so that customers can use a product for as long as possible.

[00:05:13] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
How is the maturity of the product passport at your company? Is it something that you are currently implementing or it's already working?

[00:05:23] INGA MULLER:
Yeah, the digital product passport is quite a challenge, I would call it. So we are currently in the development or implementation phase, I would call it. We started the project a year ago and started to collect information on the product passport to read all the regulations, to have a look at what are other companies doing.

So we started about a year ago, collected all the requirements and now started into the implementation phase, where we say, okay, now we are able to implement the concepts we already made so that we can offer the digital product passport in the future.

In addition to that, we have a demonstrator, I would call it. Our Asset Administration Shell portal, where we already offer first articles with some information that is important for the digital product passport. So we are offering our customers the possibility to already have a look at our articles and see, okay, some of them already have information like the product carbon footprint or digital name place or something like that, that will be part of the digital product passport.

So we are already, I would call, trained and to see what is going on. And on the other side we are implementing the, I would call it, big solution so that we have both on a parallel way.

[00:06:51] JOS VOSKUIL:
Personally I see the introduction of the digital product passport as also a great way to introduce digitalization in the traditional world of product development. From your end digitalization went very slow because it's change of people, change of ways of working.

And so I'm curious, is the digital product passport implementation also driving people to change in the way of working? How do you deal with that? I mean, do you do pilots? Do you do sessions with people? Can you tell us more about that?

[00:07:21] INGA MULLER:
Yeah. I would say the biggest challenge in the digital product passport is complexity, and part of the complexity is the amount of people who are working on it because we need everybody in the company. A lot of projects only are important for a very small amount of people, so like with two or three departments, you can easily implement a lot of projects. But for the digital product passport, we need almost every department in the company.

And to get all these people together who have a different kind of knowledge and also a different way of thinking and a different depth into this topic of digitalization is very interesting and also very challenging, because you have to get to the people where they are. So it's not like you can just communicate, okay, we are doing a digital product passport, and then go on. But we have one sub goal in the project is just to communicate with everybody, to make stakeholder management, to have regular meetings, to have regular updates, to have the documentation because we see that it's very difficult to have everybody on track, to have everybody at the place where we need them, and to have all the information and all the heads of the people that we need.

[00:08:51] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
How do you manage in the preparation phase to collect all the requirements for each one of the stakeholders? What kind of initiatives do you lead?

[00:08:59] INGA MULLER:
At first, as I said, we have one sub goal that's just communication. So we have one person in the project who's responsible only for this topic, who is responsible for talking to the people, to have a look at who is important, to have a look at who do we need and where do they stand and how do we have to communicate with them.

And she has a team of two or three people who are helping her with that. So it's that we are basically saying it's so important to us that we have a group of people who do nothing else in this project, but to communicate and to have a look at exactly this 'cause we said, okay, we can do this classic stuff like a stakeholder analysis and do all the tools, but I think the most important thing is to have somebody being responsible to do all that, because otherwise you as a project lead do it once and then yeah, it's getting lost in the process of the, the implementation.

[00:10:06] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And do you know some activities that they were doing not only to like communicate, but to receive the information. So it was, was it one day full focus on this so people is not thinking on their projects or daily task or it was more split into the time, or how was it, some advices for the listeners?

[00:10:25] INGA MULLER:
Yeah, it's not just one day, I would call it. In the beginning we did a lot of one-on-one meetings, I would call it. So we had a look at who is important for these requirements, who do we need to interview, I would call it. So in the beginning we did a lot of one-on-one interviews with the most important stakeholders.

And after that we did work workshop where we could talk with everybody in small groups and made it public for everybody at WAGO because we said maybe we did not reach everybody. So we are openly inviting everybody who's interested and who wants to come comes. And there were a lot of interesting, new requirements because there were people we didn't think of and they had a lot of interesting views on the topic.

And in addition to that, we have every four weeks, we have a regular meeting where we also discuss with other people. So it's really a lot of meetings, a lot of work where we say, okay, we are continuously taking everybody into account to say, okay, if you're not happy with how it's going now or if you have any information for us please leave it here and we can discuss it.

[00:11:44] JOS VOSKUIL:
And how was the mood of the people? I could imagine it just from the outside, extra work, more complex. I don't like it. How did you get the people to be motivated that they go with you in this journey?

[00:11:56] INGA MULLER:
Yeah, it's very interesting because we have every variety of motivation I would call it. So we have people who say like, oh yeah, it's more work. I don't know how to do it. It costs money. How can we do that? I don't want to do it maybe.

And then we have other people who are at the other end of the scale, were so motivated that you sometimes have to stop them a little bit because you say, okay, yeah, I know you see all the potentials that are in this project, but we have to start small because of this complexity. We need to start at the beginning and we have to build it step by step. And we'll come to that point where we can do all the cool stuff, but firstly we have to do our homework.

And for me, it was really helpful to take these really motivated people and integrate them into motivating the others. Because I'm not a natural motivator. I'm more of a doer I would call it. So I know when I want to motivate people it's easier for me to take others who are very motivated and I know they have this ability to take others with them, especially when they're in the same department as the ones I want to motivate. So then I said, okay, I'll take the ones who will help me and, take them together with the ones who are maybe not so motivated. And I'm more like moderating the whole meeting and they are doing the work by themselves, I would call it. And a lot of times that works but sometimes you have people, I would say you cannot really motivate.

So I think that is part of the human nature, that you are not able to get everybody into the interior boat. Then you have to find a compromise and say, okay, let's do this. You have to trust me now that this is important, and we will have a look at it in six months, in 12 months, how it's going on. And if we can see anything for you here.

[00:15:02] JOS VOSKUIL:
Do you also work on storytelling on the bigger picture why are we doing this maybe as WAGO as a company?

[00:15:09] INGA MULLER:
Our story is always to create added value for our customers. At the moment, we are starting with legally binding information that will be necessary in the future. But the technology we are building on offers a lot of possibilities to add more information, to add services, and things like that.

So at the moment, I see this project more often an enabler for future business models and services. Because once we have this framework, we are able to flexible adding additional things. So we do not have this like classical storytelling, I would call it. Also the emotional story, we can spin around it.

I saw a really cute video on a conference, where they showed the life of a controller as a cartoon. Unfortunately, they're not allowed to share that video, but this was really touching because we had this controller and it had like emotions, and you can see it in the face because they had made it expressional. And everybody in the room was really touched by that video because you saw, okay, this controller is very happy because it's just born and working in the company. And then you see, or no, it's coming to its end of life and everybody was very sad and got a second live and everybody happy again. It was really touching.

I want something like that too. I'm not sure how I can implement it, but that was really, really a great way of seeing the digital product passport because normally we talk about it in a very technical way and in an abstract way, and that was very touching and in an emotional level, I would call it.

[00:17:05] JOS VOSKUIL:
So you make us very curious, but yeah, I fully agree. I mean, if you can connect to the emotion, then it really starts to be working inside you then you go for it.

[00:17:15] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yes. And how are you now trying to have the big picture in mind, so how it's the way that you make sure that the vision is still live during the rollout?

[00:17:27] INGA MULLER:
That's a very good question because as I said, the biggest challenge is complexity. The first step is always trying to reduce complexity. So we have cut our project into sub goals so that we have different people who are responsible for the sub goals, and then we can discuss everything together in a big round. But everybody is working on their field of work, I would call it. Then we are getting things together.

In addition, we are trying to have a look at which different combinations of the digital product passport are possible. For example, we have articles that are just like one article but we also have configured articles where many articles in one product, I would call it, we have different kinds of packaging, different kinds of where it is produced and things like that. So it's mainly running around collecting everything that is done by now. We are trying to get everybody in the boat with the communication so that we can react to changes fast because sometimes there are changes in the organization that are important for us.

So, yeah, it's not like I could give an easy answer to that question. It is very complicated. It's a lot of work, and I think it is just about. The focus on how do I reduce complexity? Because in that complexity you could not implement the project at all. You have to cut the elephant into slices. I hope it's all working in English, this saying, but yeah, it's just an iterative process on doing things, checking if they worked and then to go on, because I think it's doesn't make sense to think about concepts for two years and then implement the whole concept at once in three months and then see, okay, the big solution didn't work out. So we are starting small, doing things and then seeing how we are moving on.

[00:19:38] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yeah. One question, once you have the concept itself, are you also having as a reference the current system landscape and data architecture to be able to conduct extract the way that you are going to extract the data for the digital passport, or is it the other way? That first you envision what data you need for the passport and then you develop functionalities in the supporting system? What is the strategy?

[00:20:06] INGA MULLER:
The strategy is to first have a look at what we need, because I'm always the friend of having a look at the requirements first and then trying to yeah, fulfill these requirements because I often see that people have a solution before they have a problem. And I think that is not a great way of solving problems because then I only see the solution, but it could be that the solution doesn't solve any problems or it doesn't solve the problem I have.

So first I want to have a look at, okay, what are my requirements? What is the information that I need? And maybe in the end I would see, okay, the information that I need. I do not have it in any of the systems. I have to add them. So we started with collecting what information do we need, and now we are making the concept or we've already accomplished the concept. How do we get this information from the different systems together?

[00:21:09] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Okay. And what are the main systems supporting the data needed?

[00:21:15] INGA MULLER:
I would call them the big three because at our company we have our product data in our PLM system. So that is our single source of truth for everything that has to do with product conformity. So technical data certificates and things like that. Also our change management is in the PLM system.

Then we have the logistics data, like for example, year of production, date of production and serial numbers and things like that we have in our ERP system. And in addition to that, we have a PLM system in which we have additional information. That is mainly important for, I would call it marketing proposals, so videos, pictures, other documents like, how is it called? The, the…

[00:22:09] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
…the manuals

[00:22:09] INGA MULLER:
...the manual? Yeah. And things like that. So we have this big three. And then of course there's a lot of, I would call shadow data in heads or in some kind of paper form or in a SharePoint folder.
But we said, okay, for an automated calculation of the digital product passport we cannot, we cannot connect to the heads of people, so we need to get everything into this big three system because otherwise we have not sensed.

[00:22:42] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Okay. That's very good, very advanced that you have these three big systems and everyone is working on those. So you don't have different DRPS, like most companies, so yeah.

[00:22:55] JOS VOSKUIL:
So I hear with my digital PLM twisted brain, I hear so many points I like, and especially in the transition from coordinated and document driven ways of working to connected, the modern ways of working for sustainability. And I realized, I learned also something again because I always looking for good one-liners. And one of the one-liners you said in the beginning when we talked about digital product passport is, we need everyone in the company. I mean, I think that's one of the characteristics I realized if you go to a digital enterprise, because everyone is connected, everyone needs to be also involved.

And so, it's not a pilot anymore that you can do in the corner of the company. And maybe that's also why digitalization is so difficult in companies. And this brings me to experience. I mean, I have another experience today, so I thank you for that. But experience is what you get also when you don't get what you expect. And then, now I'm curious, can you share a moment of your experience in the company or in your PLM Life?

[00:24:01] INGA MULLER:
Yeah, it's quite funny because when it was like an accident, how I got into my position today because after my studies I applied for jobs and I also saw this job here at WAGO that said we train to do digital engineering. And I studied mechanical engineering, so I thought, okay digital engineering something with development and product development and mechanical stuff, 3D things.

And so I applied and in the end it turned out it wasn't digital engineering, but it was more of a data management component. And that's how I got into this data and digitalization context, and I'm very glad that this happened. I didn't know what I was really going getting into, but I'm glad that it turned out this way because digitalization is a very interesting field.

As you said, it has a lot of potential for the future, so this is something, yeah, happy little accidents, I would call it.

[00:25:06] JOS VOSKUIL:
And what I hear is also the open mind you wanted to go into it?

[00:25:10] INGA MULLER:
Yeah.

[00:25:13] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yeah. And Inga, what is the message you would like to share with our listeners?

[00:25:17] INGA MULLER:
The digital product passport is a very complex thing to implement at a company, and it's coming. And I would recommend everybody to start early because you will need a lot of time, not for the technical stuff but for the organizational and people stuff. So I would recommend everybody, to get their organizations ready to talk to their colleagues, to talk to the organization. Getting ready, because otherwise it will be very, yeah, closely to getting to the end of the, the regulation.

So start early and then you can change things in the digitalization that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

[00:26:04] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Thank you very much, Inga. Thank you Jos, and thank you to our listeners for turning in.

[00:26:09] JOS VOSKUIL:
Thank you for interesting lesson learned today. Thank you.