Patent ID: 8050576

Claim:
A management system comprising: an image forming apparatus including: a developing unit that develops, with toner, an electrostatic latent image formed on an image carrier; a toner storage unit that stores the toner used in the developing unit; and a toner-transporting unit that transports the toner from the toner storage unit to the developing unit; and a management device that is connected to the image forming apparatus through a communication unit, and that manages a remaining amount of toner in the toner storage unit provided in the image forming apparatus, wherein the management device includes: an acquiring unit that acquires, from the image forming apparatus, information on transportation time of the toner by the toner-transporting unit, information on a characteristic quantity with regard to variation in toner consumption in the developing unit, and information on a characteristic quantity representing environment in the image forming apparatus; a predicting unit that calculates a predicted value of the remaining amount of toner in the toner storage unit with the information on the transportation time of the toner acquired by the acquiring unit; a memory that stores a correspondence relationship between the predicted value calculated by the predicting unit and a measured value of the remaining amount of toner in the toner storage unit; and a correcting unit that corrects the correspondence relationship stored in the memory according to the characteristic quantity with regard to variation in toner consumption and the characteristic quantity representing environment, which quantities are indicated by the information acquired by the acquiring unit, and that corrects, with the correspondence relationship having been corrected, the predicted value calculated by the predicting unit, wherein the correspondence relationship between the predicted value calculated by the predicting unit and the measured value of the remaining amount of toner in the toner storage unit is determined as an average of a plurality of X/Y values where: Y is the actual predicted value, in time, calculated by the predicting unit, and X is a value, in time, from when the toner storage unit was last replaced until the toner storage unit is replaced again in response to a toner empty warning signal.