US Patent 9298404 Digital printing system having optimized paper usage

A method for manufacturing printed page products includes defining a plurality of subbatches each comprising one or more of the pages, creating layouts for the pages in the plurality of subbatches, separating the plurality of subbatches into N groups each comprising a total number of pages equal or less than M, minimizing the difference between the total pages in the N groups and M×N, and printing the layouts of the pages on a stack of sheets each configured to contain layouts for N pages. The layouts of the pages in the stack of sheets are positioned in N columns.