Toyota developed the model.
We automated it.
FMDS (Floor Management Development System) is Toyota's approach to daily shop-floor management: surface gaps, trigger action, develop people, and repeat. ProAlert's A-FMDS (Automated Floor Management Development System) takes that model and removes the single biggest obstacle to sustaining it — dependence on the right person being in the right place at the right time.
What the Floor Management Development System Actually Is
FMDS is not a board on a wall. It is a daily management operating system built around five missions: Safety, Quality, Productivity, Cost, and People Development. Toyota designed it to make performance gaps visible at every level of the organization, then close those gaps through structured problem solving, ownership, and on-the-job coaching. A-FMDS automates all five.
Safety events trigger automatically. LOTO (Lockout/Tagout) steps require confirmed completion. Safety Kaizen submissions route to the right reviewer within 24 hours with a full audit trail from submission to verification.
Defects logged at point of creation, not end of shift. Threshold alerts fire automatically. Root cause analysis built into the investigation workflow. OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) Quality score updates in real time as operators log scrap.
Actual vs. target tracked live by shift, asset, and product. Downtime events classified and owned the moment they occur. OEE as a daily operational number updated every 10 seconds, not a monthly report.
Labor cost per unit calculated from crew check-in data and OEE cycle counts, displayed alongside Availability and Performance in the same dashboard. Kaizen improvements measured for verified ROI (Return on Investment), not just completion.
Every operator action attributed individually. Kaizen participation tracked with incentive tiers from submission through verified savings. Procedures at the technician's fingertips on mobile. Institutional knowledge captured in the system, not in someone's head.
FMDS Works at Toyota. A-FMDS Works Everywhere Else.
Every manufacturer that has tried to implement FMDS has run into the same wall: the system depends on daily leadership presence, consistent coaching, and managers who ask the right questions every shift. When the right leader is on the floor, the board reflects reality. When they rotate out, go on vacation, or move to a different plant, the discipline erodes and the board becomes theatre. A-FMDS removes the dependency.
Discipline-Dependent FMDS
- Gaps visible only when someone updates the board
- Ownership assigned in the morning meeting, forgotten by afternoon
- Follow-through depends on who asks during the next walk
- History binders a revision behind and inaccessible on the floor
- System quality drops whenever a strong lean leader rotates out
ProAlert A-FMDS
- Abnormalities surface automatically... no one needs to raise a hand
- Ownership assigned by the system at the moment the event occurs
- Follow-through tracked with timestamps, GPS (Global Positioning System), and aging alerts
- Procedures versioned, approved, and at the technician's fingertips on mobile
- System holds regardless of who is on the floor that day
How A-FMDS Addresses Each Floor Management Element
FMDS is a system of interlocking practices. A-FMDS provides the infrastructure that makes each one executable, visible, and sustainable without requiring a lean champion to be physically present to enforce it.
Live OEE score updates every 10 seconds against the shift's planned production target. ScheduledNotRunning flags surface assets that should be running but haven't started. The Schedule HUD (Heads-Up Display) gives supervisors a real-time view across all assets and shifts.
Andon alerts fire the moment a downtime event is logged. Quality threshold alerts fire when scrap crosses a configured limit. Alerts route through the BOBR (Building, Operation, Branch, Resource) hierarchy to the right person, not a general broadcast. Sub-second delivery to mobile.
First-Responder-Wins claim workflow assigns one owner the moment they claim an alert. Others see who claimed it and their ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival). Response time is tracked from alert to arrival to resolution. No duplicate response, no diffused accountability.
CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) work orders carry an assigned owner, due date, and priority. Kaizen improvement suggestions move through a formal workflow from submission to implementation to verified ROI. Aging alerts fire automatically when items go overdue.
5-Why root cause analysis and Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams are built into the quality investigation workflow. FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) integration links real defect occurrences back to the failure mode that predicted them. Scrap patterns visible in defect heat maps before a Pareto chart is ever run.
Standard Work Templates (RIX) let maintenance engineers author versioned procedures with individual task steps, reference photos, and document attachments. Templates pass through a configurable approval chain before deployment, then materialize directly onto work orders at creation. The technician sees the approved procedure on their phone when they arrive at the machine.
Every Kaizen suggestion captures what the problem was, what was tried, and what actually worked. CMMS maintenance history preserves every repair, every part replaced, and every technician who touched a machine. Standard Work Templates version and archive every procedural update with a full approval trail.
Crew check-in ties individual identity to each shift and asset. Labor cost per unit is calculated from check-in data, hourly rates, and OEE cycle counts... displayed in the same dashboard as Availability and Performance. No export, no spreadsheet, no delay.
Executive Dashboard aggregates OEE, downtime, scrap, and Kaizen metrics across all facilities. Operations leaders benchmark plant-to-plant performance and identify systemic issues without losing plant-level detail.
The Complete A-FMDS Platform
Toyota's Floor Management Development System is built around five missions. A-FMDS addresses every one of them within a single platform, a single database, and a single daily management loop.
Every operator action is individually attributed — shift check-ins, DT (downtime) claims, scrap entries, material requests, and Kaizen submissions — creating a behavioral performance profile built from daily production activity. The Kaizen incentive tier system (Bronze through Platinum) creates a visible development track tied to measurable contributions. Language preference follows each operator to any device on the floor. Supervisors see participation rates, submission history, and implementation records per team member.
Safety Kaizen submissions carry a 24-hour review SLA (Service Level Agreement) and route directly to the designated safety reviewer. LOTO (Lockout/Tagout) task steps are classified as Safety in Standard Work Templates, requiring confirmed completion before a work order can close. Quality threshold alerts are configurable for safety-critical process parameters. Every safety-related action from submission through verification carries a full timestamp-and-user audit trail.
The A-FMDS problem-solving workflow combines 5-Why root cause analysis and Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram structuring in the Quality module with CMMS work orders providing the structured action record. Each investigation captures the problem statement, root cause, corrective action, assigned owner, due date, and verification outcome — the functional equivalent of an A3 document, built into the platform and tied directly to the production event that triggered it.
Every shift finalizes with a complete digital handoff record: OEE score, all downtime events with root cause classifications, scrap count and reason codes, open work orders, and Kaizen items in progress. The incoming supervisor opens the Shift History view and sees the full sequence of the previous shift — what ran, what stopped, what was called, and what remains open. The data is the handoff. No verbal transfer, no whiteboard, no information lost between shifts.
OEE targets are configured at the asset and product level, with the Executive Dashboard rolling individual asset performance up to plant-level and multi-plant aggregate views. Operations leaders see the gap between daily actuals and configured targets at every level of the organization — from the individual cell to the facility to the enterprise — updated in real time throughout each shift.
What A-FMDS Delivers
RHA Manufacturing ran ProAlert for 43 months across their production floor. These are the measured outcomes, not estimates.
ProAlert Features Inside A-FMDS
See A-FMDS running against a live production shift.
Book a 30-minute demo... we'll walk through all five FMDS missions — gap detection, ownership, problem solving, shift handoff, and goal tracking — in a single platform.