A Manufacturer Builds Finished Items A, B, and C from Five

Essay

A manufacturer builds finished items A, B, and C from five different components. They currently have several finished units, a number of items that are partially complete, and many components that have just been delivered from their suppliers. The finished items, incomplete items and raw components can all be assigned some monetary value even though the manufacturer typically does not sell anything except finished items. The manufacturer needs to raise capital quickly so they formulate a linear program to help them decide on the most profitable way ahead. Their linear programming expert forgets to restrict their decision variables to non-negative values and is surprised when the computer output tells them that finished item A and C should be negative. If the company always follows the advice of their linear programming analysis, what should they do and why?