Jennifer Crean, Co-Founder, CEO/CFO

Mrs. Jennifer Crean is an aerospace executive with extensive experience supporting the growth and development of companies ranging from Fortune 100 to aerospace start-ups. In 2002, after nearly two decades of financial, operational, and program office experience in aerospace and other industries, she cofounded Crean & Associates with her husband, James.

Throughout her career, Mrs. Crean helped companies develop integrated technology and management plans for both large scale government and a wide range of commercial systems seeking to grow and expand their markets. Her extensive aerospace experience includes work for Hughes Space & Communications, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and AMPAC. In addition, she supported the NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System and the GOES-N,O,P Weather Satellite Systems.

Jennifer Crean is a graduate from Brock University with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. She recently received the Consulting Women Leaders in Technology Award, and you can read more about her in a featured spotlight in the Austin Business Journal. She is married with three children.

James Crean, Co-Founder, President / CTO

Mr. James Crean is an aerospace innovator with a passion for driving the implementation of smart factory technologies & methods in the United States.  He spent the first half of his career at Hughes Space & Communications and Boeing where as a systems engineer he and a small team developed the first DirecTV satellite system, as well as other novel mobile communication systems for commercial companies as well as to support vital US government missions. He put this wide-ranging experience to use in developing leading edge large-scale deployable antenna systems for satellite applications, performing launch simulation vibration and acoustics testing of  full-up satellite systems, and systems engineering the world’s most advanced global weather satellite systems. His diverse background also includes developing key aspects of the company’s enterprise wide asset tracking system application as well as a variety of engineering analysis applications.  He stood up the Supplier Program Manager role for Boeing satellite propulsion group, working with suppliers to qualify their systems and deliver faster and cheaper.  He was a program manager for the NASA Tracking & Data Relay Satellite System, was deputy business unit leader, and formed the company’s Lean Six Sigma group.

After founding CREAN Inc., Mr. Crean’s Lean Six Sigma experience developed into a focus on integrating smart factory technologies with LSS methods to develop real-time optimization methodologies coupled with embedded and integrated systems to maximize the efficiency and responsiveness of production environments, which he dubbed the Smart Factory Operating System™.  He has been integrally involved in over 100 Smart Factory / LSS engagements that have progressively produced more and more astounding efficiency & effectiveness results, including in some of the most well run and complex operations in the country.  Although CREAN Inc. supports some of the largest Fortune 100 companies in the world, his greatest pleasure comes from working with entrepreneurs in engineering new innovative systems and then producing them faster and more efficiently than any competitor could imagine.

Mr. Crean has an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management, a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering and Material Science Engineering. He is married with 3 children, and yes, before you ask, quite enjoys working with his wife.