Patent ID: 8401810

Claim:
A scheduling device comprising: a first grouping section for (i) sorting out plural pieces of substance data in a mass spectrometer, the plural pieces of substance data corresponding to a plurality of substances respectively, each of the plural pieces of substance data indicating a plurality of features of its corresponding substance, the first grouping section sorting out the plural pieces of substance data on the basis of at least one of a retention time, a detection start time, and a detection end time that are included in each of the plural pieces of substance data, and (ii) grouping the plural pieces of substance data into a plurality of first data groups so that (1) an upper limit of the number of pieces of substance data per first data group is equal to the number of channels of the mass spectrometer, and (2) each of the plurality of first data groups includes pieces of substance data that are successively arrayed in an order resulting from the sorting; a second grouping section for (i) finding, for each of the plurality of first data groups, a measurement time range which is a time range between an earliest detection start time among those of pieces of substance data, included in that first data group, and a latest detection end time among those of the pieces of substance data, included in that first data group, and (ii) grouping the plurality of first data groups into a second data group(s) so that an interval between time ranges of neighboring first data groups among the plurality of first data groups is not less than a first specified value set in advance; and an output data generation section for generating a measurement schedule for (i) introducing a target sample of measurement into a substance separation device on the basis of the second data group(s), and (ii) controlling the channels of the mass spectrometer so that substances corresponding to the plural pieces of substance data, included in each of the plurality of first data groups, are subjected to mass spectrometry analysis.