Crue IQ helps advisory firms, financial sponsors, and corporate teams solve complex strategic and operational problems in engagements that range from rapid diligence to long-term transformation work.
Automotive · Aerospace & Defense · Consumer Products · B2B DaaS · Healthcare · Construction · Energy · Hospitality · Industrial Equipment
Crue IQ brings operator-grade thinking to the questions that don't fit a standard consulting model. Twenty-plus years across competitive intelligence, primary research, industry benchmarking, and analytics platforms, paired with hundreds of factory visits and hands-on operational work.
Clients range from $15M specialty manufacturers to $150B+ Fortune 10 enterprises, PE-backed, private, and public. Engagements range from one-week diagnostics to multi-year platform transformations.
Most engagements start with a short call to determine fit. Here's how Crue IQ typically engages with each type of client.
Crue IQ subcontracts through boutique and global advisory firms, bringing senior delivery capacity and topical depth in operations, strategy, and analytics. We integrate with your methodology, work to your brand, and scale through our network when an engagement calls for more hands.
Comprehensive transaction services: buy-side and sell-side operational diligence, commercial diligence, and market studies. Projects ranging from pre-close through 100-day planning, rapid operational maturity assessments, and value creation support. Fifteen-plus completed transactions across industrials, manufacturing, consumer products, and recreation. Engagements typically run two to eight weeks.
Direct operational work like performance improvement, supply chain and capacity readiness, analytics and reporting, and program management. Often engaged with the sponsor in the loop, occasionally engaged independently by company leadership. Focus is execution, not another slide deck.
Direct engagement with strategy, operations, and CI leaders on the questions that don't have a template. Diagnostic and roadmap work, performance programs, analytics platform design, enterprise strategy and alignment. Experience with companies ranging from $15M specialty manufacturers to $150B+ Fortune 10 enterprises.
Buy- and sell-side operational and commercial diligence, market studies, expert advisory.
Cost reduction, turnarounds, and performance management.
Rapid assessment, supply chain readiness, and finite capacity scheduling.
Analytics platform design and redesign, automated workflows, ML algorithms, quality-at-source data systems, CI function design.
One-day to one-week operational maturity diagnostics including opportunities, prioritization, directional impact and risk.
Cross-functional buy-in, data-driven target setting, portfolio management, win/loss analysis, change management.
Scoped engagements with defined deliverables and timelines.
Part-time integration with your team for ongoing strategic support.
On-call expertise for deal teams, boards, and leadership on critical decisions.
Crue IQ is solo by design and scalable by network. For engagements that call for additional capacity or specialized depth, Crue IQ can draw on a network of trusted senior consultants and operators with complementary expertise. Clients get a senior principal on every engagement, and the bench they need behind them.
Selected engagements Joe has led or directly managed across his career, organized by the kind of work. Client names are withheld; sectors and outcomes are real.
Managed a B2B benchmarking platform serving every major global automotive OEM as recurring clients. Ran product management and account management, drove feature prioritization for the web application, and delivered the customized reporting clients used to set internal performance targets.
Led a team of analysts and developers to deliver the end-to-end digital transformation of an inherited paper-based analysis process, applying value stream mapping, process automation, and data quality controls. Developed the machine learning algorithm that shifted the industry's core productivity metric from a labor benchmark to a design-complexity predictor.
Built a Python-based finite capacity scheduler for a publicly-traded space transportation manufacturer, modeling 9,700+ operations across more than 400 workcenters. The capacity planning analysis established the production baseline that secured executive approval for the annual operating plan.
Ran the monthly CEO dashboard for a $40B Fortune 50 enterprise, integrating financial planning, operational performance, and competitive intelligence into the executive cadence. Led target margin setting and portfolio management across eight business units and linked to the strategic planning process.
Built the business development function for a top consulting firm's industrials and private capital practice, where none existed before. Designed the pipeline management process, account targeting, and go-to-market cadence that nearly doubled the practice over two years.
Led and supported commercial, operational, and vendor due diligence on 12-plus transactions for private equity sponsors and investment banks across industrials, manufacturing, and recreation. The work spanned market sizing and TAM analysis, customer segmentation, competitive analysis, and operational assessment. One client called the resulting model the best he had seen in his industry.
Identified and qualified a supplier for a Fortune 500 automotive OEM's electronic parking brake that engineering had dismissed and sourcing had overlooked. The strategic sourcing and negotiation work delivered $15M+ in annualized savings on one component, inside a $50M+ cost reduction program.
Directed a team of 14 consultants in rapid supplier risk assessment of 59 automotive suppliers, using a 50-plus criterion methodology. The program identified more than $10M per week in profit-at-risk and delivered a prioritized remediation roadmap to the client.
Surfaced an $11M material discrepancy at a global automotive wire harness manufacturer that finance, engineering, and operations had each missed. Diagnosed the root cause as ERP master data integrity failures and directed the team that validated and resolved it, helping to stabilize plant financial performance.
I've spent twenty years trying to close the gap between how smart people think about operations and how real operations actually work.
Most of that time was at Oliver Wyman, where I led operational and commercial diligence across more than a dozen private equity transactions and spent years as custodian of one of the automotive industry's most-referenced benchmarking programs. The platform had been a paper-based exercise when I inherited it. I rebuilt it end to end: an 800-element value stream map, quality-at-source data validation, automated workflows, and an ML algorithm that redefined how the industry measured productivity. By the time I handed it off, it was serving every major global OEM, running at $5M in ARR with zero churn.
That work set the pattern for everything since: take something that ought to work, figure out why it doesn't, and rebuild it on better bones. I've done it as a senior strategist at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, as managing director of an engineering services firm, and in subcontracted senior advisory work through boutique and global consultancies. Along the way, more than a hundred factory assessments at benchmark OEM plants, fifteen-plus transaction diligences, and a lot of time on shop floors watching lines that weren't running the way the KPI deck said they were.
Crue IQ is what I built to do this work independently. The practice is a single principal by design — so clients get the senior person in the room, every time — and a network by necessity, because the best engagements often call for more hands or complementary depth. Either way, the work is mine.
Automotive OEM · Automotive Independent Aftermarket · Aerospace & Defense · On- and Off-Highway Equipment · Powersports · Recreational Vehicles · RV Parks & Campgrounds · Building Products & Construction · Specialty Manufacturing
The best first step is a short discovery conversation, fifteen to thirty minutes to understand what you're working on and whether Crue IQ is the right fit. If it's not, you'll hear that, and where possible, a pointer toward someone who is.
