Patent ID: 8422936

Claim:
An image forming system comprising: an image forming apparatus which forms an image on a sheet; a plurality of finishing apparatuses each of which is configured to perform finishing to the sheet on which the image is formed by the image forming apparatus and discharge the sheet; and a conveyance unit apparatus to which each of the image forming apparatus and the plurality of finishing apparatuses is connected; wherein the image forming apparatus includes a control section which judges as to which of the plurality of finishing apparatuses performs the finishing to the sheet and which transmits a judgment result to the conveyance unit apparatus, when a number of sets to be output according to a job to be executed is plural and when a given plurality of the finishing apparatuses, each of which can perform finishing corresponding to the job, are connected to the conveyance unit apparatus, wherein the conveyance unit apparatus includes: a plurality of placement sections in which the plurality of finishing apparatuses can be placed respectively, a conveyance path along which the sheet on which the image is formed by the image forming apparatus is conveyed, a plurality of discharging sections which are respectively provided in the placement sections, wherein the plurality of discharging sections are configured to discharge the sheet conveyed along the conveyance path to corresponding finishing apparatuses placed in the placement sections, one or more discharging-section switching sections among which a discharging-section switching section, corresponding to a discharging section discharging the sheet conveyed along the conveyance path among the plurality of discharging sections, is switched, and a control section which judges the discharging section as discharging the sheet based on the judgment result received from the control section of the image forming apparatus and which switches the discharging-section switching section so that the sheet is discharged to the judged discharging section, and wherein the control section of the image forming apparatus is configured to perform wait processing to stop image formation during a predetermined time between image forming processing for each of a plurality of sheets to be printed sequentially, when a speed of continuous printing of the image forming processing exceeds a processing speed of the given finishing apparatuses connected to the conveyance unit apparatus, and when a remaining number of sets is not equal to or above a number of the given finishing apparatuses connected to the conveyance unit apparatus.