US Patent 7349638 Image forming system and image forming apparatus

Provided is an image forming system and an image forming apparatus capable of reliably reporting information relating to a remaining amount of consumables to an operator without increasing the number of operations of the operator of the image forming system. The image forming system connects a variety of kinds of managers such as a process control manager, an order receiving/original receiving manager, and a message manager, and post-treatment devices such as MFPs, a cutting machine, and a saddle stitch bookbinding device, via a network. The message manager reads the remaining amount of paper sheets of an applicable printer device from a consumption degree table which is stored in an HDD; computes an expected amount of consumption of the paper sheet of the applicable printer device to be consumed due to execution of a job; and when the remaining amount of the paper sheet is below 0 as a result of subtraction of the expected consumption amount of the paper sheet from the remaining amount of the paper sheet, displays on a UI a warning message indicating that an operator maintenance is necessary.