Maintenance system for performing maintenance of image forming apparatus

A maintenance system for performing maintenance of an image forming apparatus forming an image on a recording medium, the maintenance system comprising:

• the image forming apparatus;
• and
• a mobile terminal,
• wherein the image forming apparatus includes:
• a control unit including a CPU and functioning, through execution of a control program by the CPU, as:
• a control section;
• a failure information generation section, upon occurrence of a predefined abnormality related to operation of the image forming apparatus, generating failure information in which information related to the abnormality is visualized in a character;
• an information encoding section generating encoded failure information obtained by encoding the failure information generated by the failure information generation section;
• and
• a code generation section generating a code image obtained by one-dimensionally or two-dimensionally coding the encoded failure information generated by the information encoding section;
• and
• a storage device storing, as an image file, the code image generated by the code generation section,
• the mobile terminal includes:
• a control unit including a CPU and functioning, through execution of a decoding control program by the CPU, as:
• a code analysis section acquiring the encoded failure information from the code image;
• and
• an information decoding section decoding the encoded failure information acquired by the code analysis section to acquire the failure information,
• the information encoding section of the image forming apparatus generates encoded failure information obtained by encoding the failure information by using a password inputted, and
• the information decoding section of the mobile terminal decodes the encoded failure information acquired by the code analysis section by using the password to acquire the failure information.