Plan Choosing in Digital Commercial Print Workflows

摘要

A method for online planning of a workflow for a job of processing an article in a plant in which other articles are currently being processed, may include, for each stage of the processing, assigning a machine cost value to each machine of the plant that is capable of executing that stage, the machine cost value being an exponential function of a current congestion of that machine. The method may also include constructing a plurality of workflow routes, each workflow route including a series of selected machines such that each selected machine of the series is capable of executing a different stage of the processing,. The method of may further include calculating for each workflow route of the plurality of workflow routes a route cost function that is based on the machine cost functions of the selected machines of that workflow route. The method may also include selecting a workflow route from the plurality of workflow routes based on the calculated route cost functions and processing the article along the selected workflow route.