Patent ID: 8260659

Claim:
A system for workload management of printing and inserting mail, comprising: a user interface; a processor; and a management component, when executed by the processor, to receive data that identifies available machines at a plurality of sites, identifies a work capacity for each of the available machines, identifies available staff to operate the available machines, and identifies an amount of pieces of mail for each of a plurality of cycles in a month, wherein the pieces of mail comprise invoices, to estimate a work completion time for printing the pieces of mail and inserting the pieces of mail into enclosures for each of the plurality of cycles based on the data, to compare the estimated work completion time for each of the plurality of cycles to a service level agreement, to allocate the pieces of mail for each of the plurality of cycles to the available machines and the available staff at the plurality of sites based on the comparison, to schedule downtime for the available machines and the available staff based on the allocation, and to output the allocation and the scheduled downtime to the user interface to enable a management team to take a management action based on at least one of the allocation and the scheduled downtime.