Abstract:
Construction and demolition (C&D) waste is a serious environment problem.
Recycling of C&D waste has been the interest of industry and academia alike. One of
the recent developments was the proposed Recycled Masonry Block (RMB) made
with recycled C&D waste initiated by University of Ruhuna. Research and
development of the Recycled Masonry Block was hindered by the lack of interest of
industry, resulted from unawareness of potential market success of the product.
Therefore a study was initiated to find the marketability of proposed Recycled
Masonry Block.
It was found that there had been a lapse in the New Product Development Process of
the proposed product. The Recycled Masonry Block had come to the Product
Development stage, bypassing the Concept Development and Testing stage. Thus,
the development research work is carried out without knowing the target values of
parameters and the priorities of parameters.
The study finds that durability, quality and price are the highest priorities of the
market when selecting walling materials. Thus, the environment friendliness is not
competitive enough in sorting a market for the proposed product. The study further
shows other properties which different market segments consider as significant. It
also finds certain other properties such as load bearing capacity and interlocking
ability, which are likely find priority of developers, are not critical in finding a
market for the product. It recommends to set competitive target for high priority
properties and ‘only acceptable’ targets for least priority properties in Concept
Development for the proposed product.
