[apsurd]

To ponder whether there's any value in doing anything beyond maximizing steel fabrication output.

if it's absurd to you to think that a steel fabrication company should care about anything other than fabricating more steel, well that's your philosophy.

there are other philosophies.

[Joker_vD]

Steel-fabrication company literally can not care about anything because it's not a sentient being. Humans, who are related to this company and each other, already care about lot of stuff, including the output of said company and about how much they should care about that output. But that still is not philosophy, merely applied ethics in the sense that people are simply applying the ethical values they hold to the problems before them instead of contemplating which ethical values they should hold.