Patent ID: 8120813

Claim:
A method for managing a print shop system, the print shop system including a plurality of printers, the method being implemented on a server connected to the printers, the method comprising: (a) obtaining a print job including a job ticket and a source document to be printed, the job ticket containing a plurality of job ticket parameters, the source document containing a plurality of pages; (b) analyzing the print job to determine whether to split the print job into at least two sub-jobs; if the print job is to be split, (c) generating at least two sub-documents each containing one or more pages of the source document, wherein each page of the source document is contained in one sub-document; (d) generating at least two corresponding sub-job tickets each containing a plurality of sub-job ticket parameters, at least one sub-job ticket containing at least one parameter having a value different from its value in the job ticket, wherein each sub-document and the corresponding sub-job ticket constitute a sub-job; and (e) submitting each sub-job to a printer; and (f) if the print job is not to be split, submitting the entire print job to a printer.