Patent ID: 8270021

Claim:
A system for designing cells in a document production environment, the system comprising: a computing device; and a computer-readable storage medium in communication with the computing device, wherein the computer-readable medium comprises one or more programming instructions for execution with the computing device, the programming instructions comprising one or more programming instructions for: identifying a plurality of print jobs associated with the document production environment, wherein each print job comprises one or more functions, generating a representation for each unique print job, creating one or more workflows by: for each unique function in the document production environment: determining a number of representations that require the function, determining a device count representative of a number of document production devices in the document production environment that perform the function, and determining a value equal to the difference between the number of representations that require the function and the device count; and for each function whose associated value exceeds a reference value, combining a plurality of the representations such that the value of the function does not exceed the reference value, assigning the one or more workflows to one of a plurality of cells that has one or more devices for performing the functions in the workflow, wherein each cell comprises one or more devices, determining whether one or more of the cells is complex by: determining a cell function count for each cell, and in response to the cell count exceeding a cell function count threshold value, identifying the cell as complex, and splitting at least one workflow within a complex cell.