Not sure I do fully understand your question. 10 nodes do not sound that awful lot since you might connect them via Flow variables and organise them in Metanodes so they might fit into one workflow.
Also there is the possibility of calling sub-workflow from a parent workflow:
Concerning automation: You might use KNIME in batch mode with a unix Cron Job or a Windows Task scheduler. Although the KNIME server is much more comfortable if you have larger tasks.