Why Digital Specifications Are Becoming Indispensable for Sustainable Textile Approvals

How Brain of Materials, Volkswagen and Stellantis Demonstrated at Messe Frankfurt That Digital Delivery Specifications, Machine-Readable Requirement
Plans and Automated Product Passport Comparisons Are Essential to Master the Rising Approval Workload for Recycled and Sustainable Textile Materials

Last week, the Brain of Materials team came together with the German textile industry
association ivgt e.V. – Industrieverband Veredlung, Garne, Gewebe, Technische Textilien
e.V. at the Messe Frankfurt exhibition grounds to host a dedicated Application Forum as part of Techtextil 2026. The event focused on a question that is rapidly becoming critical for the entire textile, automotive and furniture supply chain: how can material approvals for sustainable textiles be accelerated when approval requirements, recycled content shares and the resulting workload are all increasing at the same time?

The answer, as the speakers from Volkswagen, Stellantis and Brain of Materials made clear,
lies in digital specifications – machine-readable, unambiguous delivery specifications that
allow product developers, account managers, quality planners and quality inspectors of te

Who the Application Forum Was Designed For

The Application Forum was deliberately tailored to the operational reality of the textile and
non-wovens industry. The audience consisted of product developers, key account managers,
advanced quality planners, test technicians, laboratory specialists and quality inspectors
from textile surface manufacturers producing roll goods and fabricated materials for the
transportation and furniture industries, as well as buyers and quality planners from brand
companies and OEMs.

These are precisely the roles that today carry the day-to-day burden of translating increasingly demanding OEM specifications into compliant, approvable products. They are also the roles that benefit most directly from the shift toward digital specifications and machine-readable test requirements.

Why the Topic Is Gaining Relevance: Recycled Content, Stricter Approvals, More To-Dos

Several trends are converging in the textile supply chain – and each of them increases the
operational pressure on quality assurance teams:

• Higher recycled content shares: Materials with substantial proportions of
  post-consumer feedstocks are no longer a niche topic. Brand companies and OEMs are
  setting binding targets that translate directly into reformulated products that must be
  re-approved.
• Increased approval requirements: Sustainability claims, traceability of feedstocks,
  durability under recycled content variability and additional regulatory considerations are expanding the scope of material approvals well beyond the historical baseline.
• More work per approval cycle: Each new variant, each updated specification and each modified recipe generates a new requirement plan, a new sampling cycle and new test data – multiplying the workload across the supply chain.
• No proportional increase in resources: Quality teams are not growing at the same
  speed as the requirements they have to fulfil. Effort per approval must therefore decrease, not increase.

This is the structural challenge that brought all participants to the Application Forum – and it is the challenge that digital specifications are designed to solve.

Brain of Materials: Pioneer in Digital Specifications for the Textile and Automotive Supply Chain

Brain of Materials has positioned itself as a pioneer in the field of digital specifications – and at the Application Forum the team demonstrated why. The platform offers what is currently the widest range of digital delivery specifications available on the market, covering OEM
specifications, international standards and customer-specific requirement variants in a
structured, machine-readable format.

A digital specification, in the Brain of Materials sense, is much more than a digitised PDF. It is a semantically complete, machine-readable description of every relevant testing requirement, parameter and condition – encoded in a way that can be processed automatically across systems, suppliers and OEMs without interpretative leeway. This is what differentiates a true digital specification from a scanned data sheet.

How a Digital Specification Works in Practice

During the Application Forum, the Brain of Materials speakers walked the audience through the operational workflow of a digital specification:

• Clear configurations in seconds: A complete material configuration – including the
  relevant standards, testing scopes and customer-specific variants – can be set up in just a few clicks. The corresponding requirement plan for the material is available within seconds, not days.
• Unambiguous test requirements via TestID: Every individual testing requirement is
  referenced by a unique, machine-readable TestID (TID). This eliminates ambiguity in test scope, parameters and conditions – between brand companies, suppliers and laboratories alike.
• Target-vs-actual comparison against the product passport: Once test results are
  returned, target values defined in the digital specification can be automatically compared against the values stored in the product passport. Deviations become visible
  immediately – without manual cross-checking of PDFs and Excel tables.
• Reusability across projects: Once configured, digital specifications can be reused,
  versioned and adapted across multiple projects, suppliers and OEM customers, drastically reducing repeat effort.

Insights from the Speakers: Volkswagen and Stellantis on the Future of Sampling

The Application Forum brought together a high-profile speaker line-up. The agenda combined the perspective of the platform provider with the perspective of two of the most influential automotive OEMs in Europe:

• Dr. Thomas Taddigs – Volkswagen: Presented the Volkswagen perspective on
  sampling and material approval for sustainable textiles, including the operational
  demands placed on suppliers as recycled content shares rise.
• Markus Koretz – Stellantis: Outlined the Stellantis approach to material approval
  workflows and the practical challenges of integrating sustainable textiles into established sampling processes.
• Roger Hermasch – Brain of Materials AG: Closed the forum with concrete
  implementation examples of how digital specifications, machine-readable requirement
  plans and automated test data integration look in day-to-day practice.
  
  

The Shared Conclusion of Both OEMs

The Application Forum made it clear that digital specifications are not a standalone feature but the entry point into a fully integrated approval workflow. Within the Brain of Materials platform, a digital specification connects directly to the rest of the materials quality assurance chain:

• Configuration of requirement plans in seconds based on the digital specification, with
  all relevant TestIDs pre-assigned.
• Automated comparison of target values from the specification against the actual values
  captured in the digital product passport.
• Direct laboratory commissioning through Brain of Materials' network of more than 50
  accredited testing laboratories, with TestID-referenced test plans.
• Automated mapping of returned test results back to the digital specification, ready for
  evaluation, benchmarking and downstream system integration.
• Audit-proof documentation of the entire approval chain, from requirement definition to formal release.

For the textile supply chain – and for sustainable textiles in particular – this integrated workflow is the only realistic path to scale. Effort per approval is reduced, comparability across suppliers is increased, and the introduction of new recycled-content materials into series production is no longer slowed down by coordination overhead.

Summary: Why the Application Forum Mattered

The Application Forum at Techtextil 2026 in Frankfurt brought together the right audience, the right OEMs and the right topic at exactly the right moment. The key takeaways for the textile, automotive and furniture supply chain are clear:

• Sustainable textiles with high recycled content from post-consumer feedstocks are reshaping the material approval landscape – and the workload that comes with it.

   

• Approval requirements are increasing, not decreasing – which means effort per approval cycle must be reduced through digitalisation.

   

• Digital specifications – machine-readable, unambiguous, and comparable against the product passport – are the operational lever that makes this reduction possible.

   

• Brain of Materials offers the widest range of digital delivery specifications on the market and acts as a pioneer in digital specifications for the automotive, textile and furniture industries.

   

• The OEM speakers from Volkswagen and Stellantis aligned on a single, unambiguous conclusion: digital tools are essential and absolutely necessary to manage the rising sampling and approval workload.

   

Curious to See Digital Specifications in Action?

Would you like to understand how digital specifications, machine-readable requirement plans and automated product passport comparisons can be implemented in your existing system and process landscape – and how much effort you can remove from your sampling and approval workflows?

In our complimentary webinar, we will demonstrate practical applications of how Brain of
Materials can serve as the operational infrastructure for testing and material data – with a
particular focus on sustainable textiles, recycled content materials and OEM-aligned approval workflows. Together, we will analyse typical integration scenarios, automation potentials and specific use cases along the supply chain.

Secure your appointment now and discuss your individual requirements directly with our experts.