Patent ID: 7962054

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an acquiring unit that acquires a plurality of types of operation control information of the image forming apparatus, the operation control information indicating a deterioration of a toner in the image forming apparatus or a deterioration of a component of the image forming apparatus; an index value calculating unit that calculates an index value indicating a state of the image forming apparatus based on acquired operation control information; an abnormality judging unit that judges whether an abnormality has occurred in the image forming apparatus or predicts an occurrence of a failure that requires a maintenance of the image forming apparatus due to the deterioration of the toner or the deterioration of the component based on calculated index value; and a detection pattern position detecting unit that detects a position of a detection pattern formed directly on an image carrier, and outputs position detection data, wherein the acquiring unit acquires various types of information contained in the position detection data as the types of operation control information, wherein the detection pattern includes a first line pattern, a second line pattern, and a solid image pattern, wherein the image carrier is a conveyor member that carries a recording paper onto which toner images are transferred, and wherein the index value calculating unit counts a number of peaks in the position detection data to determine the index value.