Impresse Corporation

Printcafe System, Inc.

John L Flight

Jeffrey B Winner

Yuri V Smirnov

Yuh-Wen Soung

Phillip C Nelson

Cristos J Goodrow

A scheduling engine and an associated workflow engine may be configured to build workflows that describe sequences of tasks to be performed in a dynamically changing environment. The workflow engine may be configured to monitor the execution of the tasks within the environment and to provide the scheduling engine with information regarding deviations of task executions from the workflows. When such deviations are detected, the workflow engine may trigger the scheduling engine to rebuild the workflows for as yet uncompleted tasks. The scheduling engine may receive the information regarding the deviations via a declarative model of the physical environment. In general, the tasks may be a set of job requests to be processed in a manufacturing environment (e.g., a print shop). Also, the scheduling engine may be made up of an aggregate planner and a detailed scheduler. Aggregate plans for the jobs may be first made for the jobs and then passed to the detailed scheduler for timelining, etc. Building the aggregate plans may be accomplished by selecting a subset of the job requests according to a procedure for packing bins representing the resources of the manufacturing plant.

Method and apparatus for creating adaptive workflows

A directed graph includes a first number of state nodes and a second number of task nodes. The task nodes are interconnected with the state nodes to define one or more paths through the directed graph, each of the paths including an alternating series of one or more of the state nodes and one or more of the task nodes. Thus, any predecessor state node in one of the paths represents a precondition for a subsequent task node along that path. Further, any following state node of that task node represents a result of applying one or more actions that correspond to the task node. The state nodes may be virtual representations of inventory items of a manufacturing environment. Thus, collectively the state nodes may define a bill of materials for the manufacturing environment. Similarly, the task nodes may each define a virtual representation of a manufacturing process within the manufacturing environment. In other words, the task nodes may collectively define routings for the manufacturing environment.

Manufacturing process modeling techniques

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

John L Flight