US Patent 7812997 Job ganging via automatic proportional concatenation

A number of different print jobs having different print quantities can be combined into a single job that results in reduced bindery costs. An imposition is produced with the print patterns for the different print jobs in different print positions. Jobs with larger print quantities can occupy a greater number of print positions. The allocation of print positions among the different print jobs can be based on quantity ratios. A print job having twice the quantity of another should occupy twice the number of print positions. Proper allocation of print positions results in maximizing the number of sheets that can be printed with a single imposition. Maximizing the number of identically printed sheets results in reduced bindery costs.