Error management for a tandem printing system

A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable software embodied therein for printing a print job from a computer workstation, the computer workstation communicatively coupled to a controller coupled to plural multifunction peripherals for printing, the software including instructions for:

• (a) sending the print job to one or more of the plural multifunction peripherals for printing of the print job;
• (b) monitoring a status of the print job with respect to each multifunction peripheral that received the print job to determine whether an error is present in any of the multifunction peripherals with respect to the print job;
• (c) detecting an error in a first multifunction peripheral with respect to the print job, wherein the error causes the first multifunction peripheral to interrupt printing of the print job;
• (d) waiting a predetermined time period to provide time to overcome the error;
• (e) if the error is not overcome within the predetermined time period, polling the status of the multifunction peripherals other than the first multifunction peripheral to determine whether any other multifunction peripherals are error-free;
• (f) if the polling indicates that any multifunction peripherals are error-free, sending the print job to one or more of the error-free multifunction peripherals.

A printing system for printing a print job, the printing system comprising a control unit for a printer, the control unit including a software program, wherein the software program includes instructions for causing the control unit to:

• (i.) send the print job to one or more multifunction peripherals for printing in response to an instruction from the computer workstation, the print job comprising multiple copies of a single document;
• (ii.) monitor the status of each of the multifunction peripherals with respect to the print jobs;
• (iii.) determine whether a print error has occurred with respect to any of the multifunction peripherals printing the print job, wherein a print error causes the multifunction peripheral to stop printing the print job;
• (iv.) if a print error has occurred with respect to a first multifunction peripheral, polling each of the other multifunction peripherals of the plural multifunction peripherals to determine whether any other print errors are present;
• (v.) identify which multifunction peripherals are error-free;
• (vi.) determine how many copies of the multiple copies of the document remain unprinted;
• (vii.) instruct the error-free multifunction peripherals to print the remaining, unprinted copies of the document, wherein the remaining copies of the document are divided among the error-free multifunction peripherals.