Patent ID: 6805502
Filing Date: 2004-10-19
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
In a printing environment having equipment for processing print jobs, a method, comprising the steps of:receiving a selected print job; dividing the selected print job into batches, where a size of each of the batches is selected to substantially optimize a time period it takes for the selected print job to be fully processed; to determine the total production time Tprod, which includes the time taken to process the first batch followed by the time to process the subsequent batches, use the following equation, where ri represents the processing time of each operation per production item, i represents the number of the operation in sequence, r1 represents the time it takes to print a single copy of the document, hi represents the inter-batch handling time, S1 represents the setup time for each operation, and N represents the number of production items in the print job: Tprod=&Sum;i=1i=n&it;â€ƒ&it;[bri+hi]+S1+[max&af;(bri+hi)]&it;(Nb-1);â€ƒ&it;andprocessing the batches separately and concurrently to complete processing of the print job.