Patent ID: 8355149

Claim:
An information processing apparatus for selecting a combination of printing apparatuses from among a plurality of printing apparatuses as a print destination of print data to be processed, comprising: a storing unit constructed to store device information about a paper of each printing apparatus; a selection unit constructed to select first and second combinations of printing apparatuses to process the print data on the basis of the device information stored by said storing unit and paper type information of a plurality of types of paper necessary for the print data to be processed, wherein the first and second combinations are different from each other; a setting unit constructed to set a priority order of a device count and a priority order of a processing time for the selected first and second combinations of printing apparatuses; a specifying unit constructed to automatically specify, from a plurality of combinations of printing apparatuses selected by said selection unit, one combination of printing apparatuses based on the priority orders, wherein said specifying unit (1) specifies the first combination of printing apparatuses when the priority order of the device count is higher than the priority order of the processing time and the number of printing apparatuses included in the first combination is less than the number of printing apparatuses included in the second combination, (2) specifies the second combination of printing apparatuses when the priority order of the device count is higher than the priority order of the processing time and the number of printing apparatuses included in the second combination is less than the number of printing apparatuses included in the first combination, and (3) specifies a combination which minimizes processing time from the first and second combinations when the priority order of the device count is higher than the priority order of the processing time and the number of printing apparatuses included in the first combination and the number of printing apparatuses included in the second combination are the same; and an output control unit constructed to divisionally output the print data to each printing apparatus included in the first or second combination specified by said specifying unit without changing an order of pages of the print data, wherein when it is impossible to select the combination of printing apparatuses including the plurality of paper types necessary for the print data, said selection unit selects a combination of hinting apparatuses which minimizes the number of times of paper exchange.