Patent ID: 8908196

Claim:
A print control device configured to control plural printers, said print control device comprising: a sheet-base printing speed table that indicates, for each particular sheet size amongst a plurality of sheet sizes, a sheet-base printing speed corresponding to the particular sheet size; one or more printer properties tables that store, for said each particular printer amongst the plurality of printers, properties of the particular printer; a print schedule table that registers one or more job schedule items, each job schedule item indicating a corresponding scheduled job to be performed, a scheduled printer on which the scheduled job is to be performed, an allocated job time amount and a schedule job start time at which the scheduled job is scheduled to start to be performed by the scheduled printer; and a printer allocation unit that performs, when a print job is received, printer allocation of the plurality of printers based on (i) information maintained in the sheet-base printing speed table, (ii) information maintained in the printer properties tables, and (iii) properties of the print job, and registers a sheet change job to perform a sheet change operation on a specified printer at a scheduled job time, in the print schedule table; and a printing time calculation unit that calculates a printing time associated with the received print job, based on information obtained from the print job, and in a case that the sheet change job scheduled in the print schedule table is completed in an amount of time less than the allocated job time amount, moves the next job scheduled in the print schedule table forward in the print schedule table and displayed.