Patent ID: 8019242

Claim:
An image forming apparatus including an image forming section having an image carrier, a charging section for charging the image carrier uniformly, an exposure section for exposing the image carrier to form an electrostatic latent image, and a developing section for attaching a toner to the electrostatic latent image to develop the electrostatic latent image, the image forming section undergoing process control, the image forming apparatus comprising: a counting section for keeps a cumulative count of number of printed sheets, printed with an image formed by the image forming section, which are counted in predetermined time segments, each of the time segments being obtained by dividing up a recurring time cycle; a histogram generating section for generating a histogram of the cumulative counts corresponding to the predetermined time segments; a determining section for determining an execution time of performing the process control, such that the execution process control is performed a predetermined time prior to a time segment which represents a peak of the latest histogram; and a process control management section for managing an execution of the process control in the image forming section.