Patent ID: 7734492

Claim:
A method of assessing a workflow for a print job in Job Definition Format (JDF) prior to execution of the print job, the method comprising: (a) programmatically deriving, by one or more computers, the operation semantics of the workflow into a colored Petri net by: parsing a JDF print job to determine resources, processes and resource process links for the JDF print job via a JDF parser and graph generator; associating colors to represent resources and resource attributes via a color generator, wherein the resource attributes comprise at least one of a plurality of data type, the plurality of data types comprising integers, strings, Boolean, and enumerated data types, and an equivalent color for each resource attribute type is calculated; obtaining the resource attribute values and binding functions from the JDF and capability descriptions for the JDF job stored in a knowledge base via a JDF to colored Petri net transformer; generating a colored Petri net equivalent of one or more resource attribute types, one or more resource types, one or more resource attribute values and one or more processes associated with the JDF print job via a colored Petri net analyzer by: associating a resource to a particular place type, a process to a transition and interconnections between processes and resources as arcs, wherein: (i) the arcs connect transition to places and places to transition, (ii) the transitions are the binding functions used to determine the output of resources attribute values from the input resource attribute values, and (iii) attributes of the resources denote the color that the place holds; (b) analyzing the colored Petri net workflow to check for syntactic and semantic correctness of the workflow via the colored Petri net analyzer; and (c) simulating the colored Petri net workflow for a plurality of performance metrics via a computer, wherein the performance metrics include at least one of cost, throughput, turnaround time, efficiency, resource waiting time, and waste.