Patent ID: 8514436

Claim:
A printing system including a plurality of printers that are connected to each other via a network, the printers including a highest-level printer connected to a print server and lower-level printers, the highest-level printer comprising: an input/output unit that receives a print job containing printing requirements set by a user from the print server and outputs the printing requirements to the lower-level printer, wherein the printing requirements includes indispensable requirements that are indispensable for executing the print job and desired requirements that are desirable for executing the print job; and a first determining unit that compares each of the indispensable requirements and the desired requirements with function information indicative of a printing function that the highest-level printer has, so as to determine a printability level that indicates whether the highest-level printer has a printing function that satisfies any of the indispensable requirements the desired requirements, and each of the lower-level printers comprising: a second determining unit that compares each of the indispensable requirements and the desired requirements with function information indicative of a printing function that the lower-level printer has, so as to determine a printability level that indicates whether the lower-level printer has a printing function that satisfies any of the indispensable requirements and the desired requirements; and an output unit that outputs the printability level of the lower-level printer to the higher-level printer, wherein the highest-level printer further includes a creating unit that merges information of the printability level of the highest-level printer and information of the printability levels of the lower-level printers to create a list of the printability levels; a third determining unit that determines whether a printer satisfying all of the indispensable requirement is present; a deciding unit, that when the third determining unit determines that the printer satisfying all of the indispensable requirements is present, decides on that printer as a printer that executes the print job, and when the third determining unit determines that the printer satisfying all of the indispensable requirements is not present, decides which printer to execute the job based on comparison results between each of the printers and the desired requirements; and a print-operation control unit that sends the print job to the decided printer and causes the decided printer to execute the print job.