  We investigate the partitioning of partial orders into a minimal number of
heapable subsets. We prove a characterization result reminiscent of the proof
of Dilworth's theorem, which yields as a byproduct a flow-based algorithm for
computing such a minimal decomposition. On the other hand, in the particular
case of sets and sequences of intervals we prove that this minimal
decomposition can be computed by a simple greedy-type algorithm. The paper ends
with a couple of open problems related to the analog of the Ulam-Hammersley
problem for decompositions of sets and sequences of random intervals into
heapable sets.
