Guides · weekly margin review meeting agenda
The 30-minute weekly margin review
A short, repeatable meeting that turns last week's closed jobs into one or two concrete decisions on estimates, prices, or process.
By the MarginGuard team · FactoryEdgeAI · Last reviewed
- Fixed 30-minute agenda
- Three owners in the room
- Every decision gets an owner and a check date
The problem
Month-end reviews come too late: by the time the P&L shows a margin dip, the jobs that caused it are weeks old and nobody remembers why they ran over. Without a weekly habit, the same estimates get reused and the same customers keep eroding margin.
What to measure
Each week: margin erosion on jobs closed in the last seven days, the top five jobs by dollars, any repeat patterns, and the status of last week's actions. Over a quarter: is total erosion trending down, and are actions being verified?
How MarginGuard helps
MarginGuard gives you the agenda on one screen: erosion this week, top losing jobs, cost-category breakdown, and the opportunity tracker with each action marked potential, implemented, or verified. Upload the week's export before the meeting.
Next step: sign up, load the demo, or compare plans.
How to get started
- Step 1Before the meeting (5 min)
Export last week's closed jobs from your ERP and upload. Skim the top five.
- Step 2In the meeting (30 min)
Follow the agenda below. Stop at 30 minutes; unresolved items get an owner and come back next week.
- Step 3After the meeting (5 min)
Log each decision as an opportunity with an owner and a check date.
Who attends
The owner or GM, whoever owns estimating, and whoever owns production. Add sales when customer pricing is on the table. Keep it to people who can make the fix.
Rules that keep it useful
Dollars before percentages. Patterns before individual jobs. No decision without an owner. Revisit last week's actions first, since a review that never checks follow-through becomes a complaint session.
| Minutes | Item | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 | Last week's actions: done, verified, or stuck? | Status update |
| 5–10 | This week's total erosion vs recent weeks | Trend |
| 10–20 | Top five jobs by dollars: what drove each? | Root cause per job |
| 20–27 | Patterns: same customer, part family, work center, or category? | 1–2 decisions |
| 27–30 | Assign owners and check dates | Logged actions |
FAQ
- Why weekly instead of monthly?
- People still remember what happened on a job closed last week. A month later the explanation is guesswork and the estimate has already been reused.
- What if there's nothing major this week?
- Spend ten minutes on follow-through and end early. The habit matters more than the length.
- Do we need software for this?
- No, a spreadsheet works for small volumes. MarginGuard removes the prep work by ranking erosion and tracking actions automatically from your ERP export.
Related MarginGuard pages
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MarginGuard is the profitability layer. Pair it with the rest of the FactoryEdgeAI family when you need alarms or machine monitoring too.
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- Machine Monitor
MTConnect machine monitoring for utilization and status — pair with MarginGuard when you want contribution, not just busy spindles.
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