Patent ID: 8339637

Claim:
A management apparatus, comprising: a data collecting unit that receives a plurality of types of status data from an image forming apparatus and stores the status data in a status database; a data generating unit that generates a plurality of types of target data for determining a maintenance sign, based on the status data; a first determining unit that determines a plurality of sign values based on whether each of the status data exceeds a corresponding predetermined reference value, each sign value being either a first value or a second value, wherein the first value is larger than the second value, and the first determining unit determines that the sign value is the first value when the status data exceeds the corresponding predetermined reference value and that the sign value is the second value when the status data does not exceed the corresponding predetermined reference value; and a second determining unit that performs weighted majority decision by multiplying the sign values by a corresponding weight value set for each of the status data and summing results of the multiplying to obtain a maintenance sign index value, and determines that there is a maintenance sign when the maintenance sign index value is less than a predetermined value.