Patent ID: 8311903

Claim:
A method of evaluating an impact on inventory levels of migrating from a pre-processing environment to a dynamic processing environment, the method comprising: identifying a plurality of form types to migrate from a pre-processing environment to a dynamic processing environment such that all received print jobs that use the plurality of forms in the pre-processing environment are performed in the dynamic processing environment, thereby eliminating use of the plurality of forms, wherein the pre-processing environment is a production environment where one or more operations are performed on a printing substrate to create the plurality of forms before receiving a print job to be processed on one of the plurality of forms, and the dynamic processing environment is a production environment where the one or more operations are performed on the printing substrate after receiving the print job, thereby replicating the information contained in at least one of the plurality of forms without first creating the plurality of forms prior to receiving the print job; identifying an inventory policy including an impact on inventory levels for migrating from the pre-processing environment to the dynamic processing environment, wherein the inventory policy comprises at least one user selected parameter associated with each of the plurality of forms used to determine costs associated with required inventory levels for each of the plurality of forms; for each identified form type, receiving corresponding job demand information; determining, by a computing device, a plurality of total inventory requirements and associated costs for the identified form types based on the identified inventory policy, wherein the total inventory requirements comprise a total average inventory level and a total order-up-to level; determining, by the computing device, a plurality of migrated inventory requirements for the dynamic processing environment based on the identified inventory policy, wherein the migrated inventory requirements comprise a migrated average inventory level and a migrated order-up-to level determined such that the dynamic processing environment handles all incoming job demands; and displaying, to a user, one or more statistics pertaining to one or more of the job demand information, the total inventory requirements and the migrated inventory requirements.