Patent ID: 8634731

Claim:
A method for automatic controlling of jobs to be processed, said jobs to be associated with input and output material bundles, comprising the steps of: collecting the jobs to be processed into multiple groups or clusters; automatically sorting the groups or clusters according to rules; feeding the input material bundles to a processing device at a central station, a plurality of post-processing apparatuses being connected to and downstream from said processing device; the material bundles being of predetermined bundle processing length, the jobs being processed being distributed to multiple material bundles, and before and during the processing the material bundles being supplied by means of the input bundles to the processing device, individual processing jobs segments of different length being processed, and the processed segments of the material bundle being collected into the output bundles; before the processing the jobs to be processed being collected into said multiple groups so that a total length of the segments of the jobs to be processed of each group designated as a group length lies in a range between a desired length and the bundle processing length for multiple groups, the desired length being smaller by a predetermined threshold than the bundle processing length, and, given a group for which no group length can be determined in a range between the desired length and the bundle processing length, an additional job to be processed being subdivided into a first and a second partial processing job such that the segment of the first partial job to be processed corresponds to a difference from the processing bundle length and the group length and is added to the group as a last job to be processed, and the second partial job to be processed being added to an additional group as a first job to be processed that is executed following the group with the first partial job to be processed; and the jobs to be processed of each group being executed in succession, and given group lengths whose length amounts to at least the desired length, the input bundle with which the material bundle has been supplied to process these jobs to be processed and the output bundle in which the processed material bundle is collected being exchanged simultaneously.