EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

GROUP 23
SELF-HEALING CERAMICS FLOOR

During the past decades, research in self-healing materials has focused on

the improvement in the mechanical properties, making stronger materials, able to
bear increasing solicitations. This strategy proved to be costly and, in some cases,
inefficient, since materials continue to fail, and maintenance costs remained high.
Instead of preparing stronger materials, it is more efficient to prepare them to heal
themselves, reducing repairing costs and prolonging their lifetime. Several different
self-healing strategies, applied to different material classes, have been
comprehensively studied. When new materials are subject of research, the attention
is directed into the formulations, product processing and scale-up possibilities.
Efforts to measure self-healing properties have been conducted considering the
specific characteristics of each material class.
Over millions of years’ evolution, nature seems to have developed its own
strategies in material design. Instead of adopting the damage prevention paradigm,
it prefers to keep the damage at a certain level followed by an autonomous repairing
process. This can be best seen in the healing process of a bone or skin, where the
formation of damage (scratch on a skin or crack in a bone) automatically triggers
the healing process. Inspired by this “self-healing” concept, a lot of healing
materials or healing systems have been developed in the past ten years, including
self-healing polymers, metals and ceramics. The development of these self-healing
materials marks a transformation of material design concept from damage
prevention to damage management, which may greatly increase materials’
reliability and reduce maintenance costs.
Ceramics floor is one of the most widely used materials in construction. The
demand for environmentally responsible construction and the ever more restrictive
environmental requirements derived from the legislation are increased in the
functional tiles. Substituting antimicrobial tiles for other surfaces support a
healthier environment. It is essential to improve ability to control and destroy
microorganisms to many organizations and industries, such as healthcare, food and

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drink, water treatment and military industries. There are several approaches to
obtain a multifunctional surface for ceramics floor using both soluble salt solutions
and sol-gel technology have been studied.
We would like to develop a self-healing and self-cleaning capabilities to
overcome ceramics floor problem at this time. We use both the indirect & direct
market analysis as the method to identify what consumers need and expectations
for the new product. We have 27 needs that are needed by the respondent. We asked
the things that our potential customers would not want in their ceramics floor. We
asked this to avoid putting or add certain functions in our ceramic floors. 43% of
our respondents said that they didn’t like an easily cracked ceramics floor and 38%
said that they didn’t like it when it has bad visual quality. To further confirm our
potential customers’ needs of a self-healing ceramics floor, we asked whether they
would be interested to buy a self-healing ceramics floor. 67% of the response said
very interested and 28% said interested. The next step is grouping the needs and
giving ranks for each needs. With this grouped and ranked needs we make the list
of metrics by quantifying the product properties, with this list, we make the product
specifications. The next step is doing benchmark as strength and weakness
comparison to the existing products. Based on the grouping of needs we can
conclude the consumer needs anti-crack ability and easy to clean for the ceramics
floor. Benchmarking is determining the position of the product that will be made
by comparing every specification that we had determined in own product and
similar products (competitor) that have been circulating in the market.
Benchmarking is important because it can help us to determine the marginal value
from the existing products and focus to the specification will be our special quality
from our product than other. In short, we want to solve the ceramics floor problem
with our developed product which has anti-crack ability, anti-micro bacteria ability,
affordable or feasible economically and easy to clean. We hope our design product
can be a solution for the ceramics floor problem.
For building purposes, ceramics is one of the most widely used materials,
especially for floors. In Indonesia, ceramics are very prospective industry along
with increasing domestic needs. This opportunity is supported with government
programs to improve infrastructure and property and housing development.

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Ceramics floor is liked due to it vary of design, thermal resistance, and its affordable
price. However, ordinary ceramics floor is known to break easily or brittle and
easily scratched, as also evidenced by our survey results. Therefore, it is necessary
to develop ceramics floor to improve their performance. One of the things that can
be done is the use of smart material so the material has a tendency to heal.
A survey has been conducted to gather customers’ needs regarding ceramics
floor. According to the survey, most customers need ceramics floor which not easy
to crack, not easy to scratch, also cleanable. Nevertheless, the aesthetics of the
ceramics floor must be maintained because that is what becomes the attraction of
ceramic floors for customers. Besides that, the heterogenous structure of ordinary
ceramics makes the floor brittle and low-quality glazing can make the floors are
easy to be scratched. The collected needs are converted into product specifications
with the aid of benchmarking and marginal value data. Those specifications are
initial specifications that will be modified to adjust the product concept.
After arranging the initial specification, Authors need to arrange the concept
of the product. First of all, Authors need to split the problem to simplify us to
generate concept. Generating concept is led by observing existing concept and
placing them in a concept tree. By doing a brainstorming with all the group
members, new concept and new concept tree will be obtained. Those concept tree
will be combined in new tree called concept generation tree. Those big amount of
concept will be filtered in concept selection. The first selection process is RVF
method which will eliminate concepts that classified as Redundant (R), Vague (V),
and Foolish (F). After this process, 50 remaining concepts are obtained and aim to
concept selection.
The remaining concept then will be compared with a common product
concept in the market known as a reference concept. There are eight criteria used:
ease of use, performance, ease of manufacture, safety, price, durability, aesthetic,
and toughness. Concepts with better quality of each criteria will be given “+”,
concepts with lower quality will be given “-“, and “0” for same quality. This
selection produces 6 concepts that will continue to second selection process.
The next stage of selection is concept scoring which more quantitative so
the selection will be more objective. There are 10 criteria that are used, which are

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ease of use, self-healing scratch performance, self-healing crack performance,
manufacture process, ingredients availability, safety, durability, aesthetic,
toughness, and price. Each criterion will be weighted with AHP (Analytic
Hierarchy Process) based on the comparison of one criterion to another. At the end
of selection stage, the best concept with highest value is “Heterogeneous Structure
Ceramic with firing process for healing scratch by polyurethane heat treatment”.
Concept testing must be done to validate the best concept chosen. The form
is distributed to direct users and recommendatory of floor by online form and
interview. According to the test result, 57% of respondents will definitely purchase
the product and 27% of respondents will probably purchase the product. Therefore,
this product has a potential to be marketed.
If the concept selection and validation has been done, the initial specifications are
then modified to the final concept and the product can be illustrated. Then product
positioning is held to know the position of the product in relation to existing
products for the purpose of market opportunity. Our highlighted performance of
this product is its self-healing ability to heal scratch with addition of polyurethane
coating. It has a good impact to its durability and aesthetic because the heat
treatment will not damage the surface of the glaze. This product is also having a
better toughness due to its homogeneous structure that comes from the properties
of granite rocks. With prices that are still affordable, this product is very potential
to be manufactured and used by customers.
Ceramics floor is a product that most building owners have. Flooring is such
a fundamental part of construction, it almost unimaginable not to build a house
without flooring. Through the conducted survey, the main need of customers is the
high quality ceramics floor which provides not easy to be scratched and have more
improvement to the structure. Through concept generation and selection, the final
concept obtained is homogeneous structure ceramic with firing process for healing
scratch by polyurethane heat treatment. The most special thing about this product
is that the ceramics floor can be heal the scratch by itself and have more toughness
for the structure.
To satisfy the needs, the final concept must be equipped with appropriate
ingredients and specifications. Granite is one type of ceramic with a homogeneous

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structure. Granite is an igneous rock formed from volcanic activity. Granite tile
remains a popular flooring choice because of its overall resiliency, strength, and
number of unique color options. Polyurethane which obtained Silanol-terminated
polydimethylsiloxane (STP) and dibutyltin dilaurate (DD) were used as a healing
agent and a catalyst, respectively, and they were separately microencapsulated to
prepare a dual-capsule self-healing coating.
The composition of Polyurethane using cross-linked polyurethane with
weight ratio composition contains Dimethylbenzene (24.9%), Butyl acetate
(24.9%), Cyclohexanone (12.4%), 1.4-Butanediol (BDO) (2.3%), Dibutyltin
dilaurate (DBTDL) (2.3%), Toluene diisocyanate (9.9%), Polyether polyol
HSH220 (20.9%), and Polyether polyol HSH330 (2.3%). The self-healing ability
of the ceramics floor is scratch healing. It means that the scratch healing ability of
the ceramic will appear when there is any scratch on the surface of ceramics so it
has more lifetime than usual ceramics floor.
The product is named “Grand Night”. This “Grand Night” product is expected
to be able to work well and effectively with self-healing ability to solve the main
problem of ceramics floor like microcracks, scratch, etc. Market analysis is one
basic consideration to determine the capacity of production. The tagline of this
product is “Technologies Right Under Your Feet”. “Technologies” means that the
product is applied with an innovation that makes the product performance better.
The technology on the product is self-healing scratch ability on ceramics floor with
polyurethane coating. “Under Your Feet” mean this product are more right under
people’s feet which is the existence is very close with human life.
According to Transparency Market Research (2017), the percentage of
ceramic tiles usage in 2017 according to global demand are 48.9% for residential
replacement, 30.7% for commercial application, 22.29% for new residential
application, and 14.78% for other application. However, that percentage is
Indonesia’s commercial usage from the global demand. Since the data obtained
before was Indonesia’s demand, the percentage is converted to cover from
Indonesia’s demand. The world demand is 13.3 billion m2 in 2017.
The ceramics floor production process in carried out in batch mode of
operation. The production process for granite tiles with self-healing agent takes

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place as a batch process with 2 batch a day and need 180 minutes or 6 hours for
each batch process and for production process of polyurethane as self-healing agent
takes place as a batch process with 1 batch a day and need 270 minutes or 4 hours
30 minutes for production. The total production process would take around 11 hours
30 minutes with processes broken down from granite blocks to granite slabs,
polishing, cut the granite slab according to the desired size, applying resin, applying
polyurethane, and packaging. Through this amount of time, around 1600 pcs granite
tiles of Grand Night is produced.
Lastly, plant location and layout must be considered to give visual
arrangement of manufacturing process. The plant operates in Cilegon industrial area
which is near Merak Port so the delivery of raw materials can be done easily and
the cost can be cheaper. Besides, the plant is also near Krakatau volcano area so
there will be many igneous rocks available, even though it is still dominated by
mines in Sumatra. The size of the land is 80 m x 60 m. It is located precisely on
Jalan Raya Bojonegara. The land price reaches Rp 2.000.000,00 per square metric.
After a series of planning what are left to complete a whole design of Grand
Night Self-Healing Ceramics Floor are supply chain and economic analysis. Supply
chain discusses how raw material can be obtained until the products reach the final
users. Economic analysis measures the feasibility of the project as well as advicing
improvements to gain a higher profitability.
Active ingredients are many imported from China with the consideration of
cheaper price and availability in high purity. For each active ingredient, two
suppliers are needed to overcome uncertainty about undesirable conditions. The rest
of raw materials are supplied from local suppliers with one supplier for each raw
material due to the high availability. Daily production capacity of 1600 pieces (832
m2) need 92.4 cbm granite of raw materials, which are supplied and inventoried in
a fixed scheduling order. The order capacity is ordered with a surplus of 120% on
the first order as awareness to safety inventory.
Grand Night will be distributed to 7 cities with high number of building
projects in Indonesia. They are divided into 5 areas. The scheduling order is
produced with distribution period of once a week to area I, II, and III. The marketing

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plan is generally to promote the product through online (website and social media),
offline (leaflets, banner, and booth stand), and sponsorship ways.
Estimation of capital investment and operational cost is needed for
economic analysis. Capital investment is estimated using Marshall & Swift Index
method, by which the direct cost including equipment, land and building,
supporting facilities, utility installation, market research, and patent is estimated to
be IDR 20,682,254,883. Indirect cost excluding contingency and contractor fee is
then calculated and leads to the estimation of IDR 24,405,060,762 as total fixed
capital. With the calculation of working capital, the total capital investment can be
estimated to be IDR 57,274,564,656. The capital is depreciated over the period of
life span by declining balance method.
To do the economic analysis, a cash flow must be created, with revenue as
inflows and capital investment and operating cost as well as tax income as outflows.
The minimum price of the product is obtained when NPV parameter equals zero,
which is IDR 258,186 for 60x60mm and IDR 388,186 for 100x100mm, this price
is for per unit. Taking a profit margin of 35%, the product price taken is IDR
348,550 for 60x60mm and IDR 477,468 for 100x100mm, this price is for per unit.
Cost breakdown is then held to know the share of each expense to the product price.
The major share is 7.40% for executive salary and 37.62% for raw material cost.
WACC as the weight average of capital needs to be calculated to determine the
value of MARR in profitable analysis. The value is 12%.
Profitability analysis is conducted to evaluate the feasibility of this project.
ROI value of 20% indicates high number of brief return on investment. Payback
period of 4.6002 years indicates short period of time to recover capital investment
with the breakeven point of 821.235 units. The modern analysis of IRR provides
value of 27.026%, which far exceeds the set MARR. NPV of IDR 87,798,868,597
gives information about the net profit get over a life expectancy of the project.
Through the profitability parameter, it can be deducted that this project is
economically feasible.
To improve the cost components in order to make the project more
profitable, sensitivity analysis is needed. The sensitivity of raw material and labor
cost as the major expenses on cost estimation will be analyzed. Through the

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sensitivity analysis, it can be inferred that raw material and product price influence
the profitability parameter quite significantly while labor cost does not. To
conclude, supply chain from raw material supplier until distribution to end user as
well as marketing has been arranged. Through profitability analysis supported by
cost estimation, the project to manufacture Grand Night is economically feasible.
Through sensitivity analysis, some concerned ways to enhance the profitability are
finding alternative raw materials which are cheaper and increasing product price
after a period of existence in the market.