1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a replacement parts ordering processing apparatus and others for ordering parts needed for periodic maintenance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic equipment such as a Multiple Function Peripheral (MFP) requires maintenance to sustain its performance. For example, a remote monitoring server connected to a network monitors abnormality of the electronic equipment. When this remote monitoring server detects abnormality, a maintenance personnel such as a customer engineer (CE) is notified of the abnormality, and maintenance may be performed.
Such maintenance may require replacement parts. Conventionally, when the replacement parts are needed for maintenance operation, customer engineers have confronted the distress of procuring the needed parts so that those parts are delivered before the day he or she makes the next visit to the client for maintenance. Typically, when the replacement parts are needed, the customer engineer accesses a part control system, checks if the required parts are in stock, and arranges delivery of the parts to the client when the stock is available. On the other hand, when the required parts are out of stock, the date in which the parts will be arriving is confirmed and their delivery to the client is arranged by the customer engineer. Depending on the stock availability of the parts, visiting day is arranged with the client.
The distress have stimulated studies on the exchange part ordering system that gives an instruction to perform maintenance operation to a customer engineer based on abnormality status notified from an image forming apparatus, and performs a delivery process to ship the replacement part to a predetermined location when the replacement of the part is necessary (see, e.g. Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2003-99550, page 1). According to the noted reference, the replacement part ordering system receives replacement part information regarding the parts that need replacing, and transmits delivery instruction information for delivering the parts on predetermined designated date to a delivery vendor, based on part control information including received replacement part information and stock status of the parts.
To prevent abnormality from occurring, a customer engineer performs periodic maintenance of an installed electric equipment by visiting a client. This periodic maintenance is performed when a predetermined condition is satisfied. The condition is, for example, that the number of outputs (prints) since the last maintenance has exceeded a predetermined number.
In such a periodic maintenance, some parts should be replaced. However, different parts will have different replacement cycles. Accordingly, the cycle of periodic maintenance would be in accord with the shortest of the replacement cycles of the parts used in the electronic equipment.
In addition to the periodic maintenance, there is an irregular maintenance that may be performed when abnormality occurs, so that a part may be replaced. In this case, there is no need to replace those parts which have not yet reached the replacement timing in its replacement cycle even at the time to perform the periodic maintenance.
Further, in performing periodic maintenance, the customer engineer needs to prepare the parts needed for replacement. However, if tens of clients are scheduled to be visited in one month and if tens of parts are required for each client, the preparation would be extremely bothersome.
As a measure to this problem, it is indeed possible to prepare enough replacement parts for the periodic maintenance, but, in doing so, a large number of stocks must be retained. It is not preferable to retain more than required stocks in view of sustaining appropriate level of the amount of stocks. Further, such stock must be abandoned when the parts are changed.
The present invention has been made in order to solve the above-mentioned problem. An object of the invention is to provide a replacement part order processing apparatus, etc. for efficiently ordering parts required for periodic maintenance.