Patent ID: 8781871

Claim:
A system of assigning operators to cells in a document production environment, the system comprising: a computing device; and a computer-readable storage medium in communication with the computing device, wherein the computer-readable storage medium comprises one or more programming instructions for: identifying a first plurality of cell operators, wherein each cell operator in the first plurality of cell operators is associated with a cell comprising one or more document production devices, wherein each cell operator possesses one or more skills relating to operation of the document production devices in the cell, identifying a cell to be staffed, identifying one or more print-related functions associated with the identified cell, wherein the identified print-related functions are print-related functions that are performable by at least one of the document production devices of the identified cell in processing one or more print jobs, identifying, from the first plurality of cell operators, a subset of cell operators comprising a group of cell operators who collectively possess the skills necessary to perform the identified print-related functions associated with the identified cell, selecting, from the subset, a second plurality of cell operators based on at least one relationship amongst the second plurality of cell operators by: identifying a range of a number of cell operators needed to staff the identified cell, wherein the range is defined by a minimum number of cell operators needed to staff the identified cell and a maximum number of cell operators needed to staff the identified cell, for each number of cell operators in the range, determining a cohesiveness value associated with each distinct combination of cell operators in the subset equal to the number of cell operators, wherein determining the cohesiveness value comprises: determining a total number of relationships that exist among the cell operators in the combination, identifying a total number of cell operators in the combination, determining a product of the total number of cell operators and one less than the total number of cell operators, and determining a ratio of the total number of relationships to the product, and selecting the combination having a highest cohesiveness value, and assigning the second plurality of cell operators from the selected combination to the identified cell.