APPLIANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an appliance management system that smoothly enables communication with many appliances. SOLUTION: When operation setting change data sent from personal computers 1 to 4 to a server 5 have overlapped setting change start times, the server 5 generates setting change commands for appliances in object stores (DTC) by the stores and also generate time data (start delay time) based upon the contents of setting change sent from the respective personal computers. Then the respective setting change commands and time data are sent to the object DTCs with time lags behind the actual setting change start time. Consequently, the data do not have the same transmission time, so communication congestion can be prevented. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI