Sylvesters Steel Works is a mini mill that recycles shredded scrap steel into usable products such as alloy (e.g., communication equipment), coils (e.g., appliances), steel bars (e.g., reinforcing concrete), and wire (e.g., cable connectors). Sylvesters starts with a basic feed stock of shredded scrap steel and then melts and purifies the steel via its high-powered electric furnace. The molten metal is next transferred for processing in Sylvesters Cold Rolling Mill (CRM), which is the bottleneck machine in Sylvesters manufacturing process.

Management of Sylvesters has provided you with the following data regarding the companys four primary product lines, and the amount of time (in minutes) a pound of each product requires in the Cold Rolling Mill (CRM).

	Alloy	Coils	Steel Bars	Wire
Contribution margin per pound	$1.40	$0.45	$0.98	$0.75
Minutes per pound in CRM	0.10	0.03	0.35	0.30

Sylvesters fixed costs amount to $2,400,000 per year.

1. Suppose the Cold Rolling Mill can be operated for 24,000 minutes per month. What product(s) should Sylvester produce in the coming month? If management follows your production advice, how much profit will Sylvester earn next month?
2. Do you believe the solution you arrived at in part (a) is feasible? What additional data would you require before deciding which product Sylvesters Steel Works should emphasize?