Mita Industrial Co., Ltd.

Kyocera Mita Corporation

Exedy Corporation

Fumio Aizawa

Yuji Yamashita

Yasuhiro Hashimoto

Jiro Nagira

A printer includes an identification unit that calculates the amount of power that will be consumed by each of a plurality of printers on a network. The printer stores power consumption calculating data for each of the printers on the network, and will identify the printer on the network having the lowest power consumption for a particular print job. The printer also includes a unit that will transfer the received print data to the printer identified by the identification unit, if the identified printer is one other than the printer that originally received the print data. This unit will also instruct the client personal computer that transmitted the print data to display a message indicating that the print data has been transferred to another printer, as well as data about the printer to which the print data has been transferred.

Printer configured to calculate power consumption data for printers on a network

In the host computer of a multiple photocopier management system, a maintenance supervising system is provided for supervising maintenance job contents on routinely serviced photocopier components. Stored in the host computer RAM are maintenance tables for retaining in routine maintenance sequences job items for periodic maintenance on the photocopier components. After completing routine maintenance on a photocopier, a service engineer inputs maintenance reporting data which is accepted in job store areas of the RAM. The maintenance reporting data categorizes a maintenance job, in particular as to whether a component has been repaired, and indicates actual job content, component-by-component. The routine maintenance sequences each constitute an order of ranking numbers each assigned to a job item, and the rank order in the sequence is updated according to the ranking number corresponding to the content of the reported job. Based on the maintenance reporting data accepted by the RAM, and on the updated job rank orders in the routine maintenance sequences, the host computer sets job items component-by-component for the next-scheduled routine maintenance from the job items stored in the maintenance tables. The job items for the work due component-by-component in the next scheduled routine maintenance are accordingly displayed.

Maintenance supervising system for an image-reproducing system

An imaging device supervision system stores data indicating, for instance, the number of sheets of paper supplied from each paper supply cassette in a copying machine, and/or the number of times the toner has been replenished, and the amount of toner cartridges in stock are stored in a copying machine supervision data base which is constructed, stored and maintained in a storage device, such as a hard drive. The supervision system updates the stock amounts for each size of paper based on the data indicating the number of sheets of paper supplied, and formulates a consumable item delivery plan according to delivery conditions set in a delivery schedule setting screen 91, to reduce the downtime due to stocks of consumable items being exhausted in an imaging device. Further, the amount of toner cartridges in stock are updated by means of the number of times the toner has been replenished, and the stock data are displayed on a status information screen 66.

Imaging device with stock supervision means

For an image reproducing system provided with an auto-restoration capability, a monitoring system is disclosed involving display by an image reproducing machine of the system in connection with fault diagnosis and auto-restoration processes by the image reproducing machine. The disclosed monitoring system in particular concerns a network of likewise auto-restoring image reproducing machines in communication with a host computer. The image reproducing machine has machine-condition constant-monitoring sensors through which a main controller of the image reproducing machine detects faults causing operational malfunction. A communication device transmits data indicating operational malfunction in an image reproducing machine from its main controller to the host computer. The main controller prepares and executes an auto-restoration process implementing restorative operations to compensate functionally for the detected faults, and interprets as restorative state data success of implemented restorative operations. A restoration process data storage of the image reproducing system stores data identifying an executed auto-restoration process. The restoration process data and the restorative state data are displayed by an image reproducing system display, which display can be by the host computer, as monitored at a remote service station by a service engineer.

Growing community of inventors

Osaka, Japan

Fumio Aizawa