Patent ID: 7430056

Claim:
A print shop consolidation system for consolidating processing of a first group of print jobs and a second group of prints jobs at one of a first print shop and a second print shop, wherein, without consolidation, the first group of print jobs would be printed at the first print shop, and wherein, without consolidation, the second group of print jobs would be printed at the second print shop, comprising: (A) memory for storing a set of information relating to both a print job processing capability of the first print shop and a print job processing capability of the second print shop; (B) a print shop consolidation management system, said print shop consolidation management system including an application for, (1) evaluating, with the set of information, an operational capacity of the first print shop to process both the first and second groups of print jobs, (2) evaluating with the set of information, an operational capacity of the second print shop to process both the first and second groups of print jobs, and (3) consolidating processing of the first and second groups of print jobs at one of first and second print shops, with said evaluations of (B)(1) and (B)(2) so that either (a) processing of the first and second print jobs occurs solely at the first print shop, or (b) processing of the first and second print job occurs solely at the second print shop; (C) in which each one of the first and second groups of print jobs is associated collectively with a production function, wherein said print shop consolidation management system determines a first rate corresponding with performing the production function at the first print shop, and a second rate corresponding with performing the production function at the second print shop, wherein consolidating processing of the first and second groups of print jobs is performed with the first and second rates; and (D) in which each rate corresponds with the function TR i (t), and TR i ⁡ ( t ) = ∑ i = 1 n ⁢ q i ⁡ ( t ) t_due i - t_arr i where, q i (t)=production quantity (of each job) associated with a production function t_arr i =time at which an i th job arrive at a given print shop t_due i =time at which the i th job is to be completed.