Patent ID: 7900904

Claim:
A finishing assembly which receives marked sheets of print media from an associated marking engine comprising: a plurality of finishing modules, each of which performs a finishing function on the marked sheets, comprising: a compiler module which compiles marked sheets into a set of sheets; at least one stacker module, downstream of the compiler module, which is configured for receiving compiled sets of the marked sheets compiled by the compiler module and stacking a plurality of the sets of sheets into a stack; at least one sheet set processing module intermediate the compiler module and the stacker module which receives a compiled set of marked sheets compiled by the compiler module and processes the compiled set of sheets; and a sheet set advancement assembly which advances sets of sheets along a substantially horizontal paper path between said compiler module and said at least one sheet processing module and between the at least one sheet processing module and the stacker module, the sheets of a set being stacked on top of one another, the finishing assembly being configured such that a first of the finishing modules performs a first finishing operation on a first set of marked sheets and a second of the finishing modules performs a finishing operation on a second set of marked sheets contemporaneously therewith.