Krassimir Totev, King County Account Executive

In his younger years, Krassimir Totev was truly a rock star in Europe; traveling the continent with his band, and developing an amazing following for his music.  Ultimately, he came off the road, and had a great middle career as an engineer, before being enticed to join the MEP mission and family.

“For the last 20 years, he has been the rock star for Impact Washington,” according to Deloit Wolfe, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Impact Washington.

After a diverse career in both Europe and the US, during which he accomplished so much for the manufacturers he worked for, in terms of equipment design, product and process development, capital investments implementation, operations management, and quality systems implementations, he joined Impact Washington in 1997.

“Krassimir has lent his expertise to Impact Washington as a Lean Practitioner and has served as the Consummate Project Manager, guiding us in best practices for developing, implementing and quantifying the results of technical assistance projects. His work is Project Management Excellence exemplified,” said Wolfe.

His impressive body of work for 20 years in the service of the MEP mission in our state has included:

• Providing technical assistance to over 150 companies himself and/or with our expert partner resources.
• Attaining over $340,000,000 in project impacts in NIST MEP survey results.
• Helping IW develop a cadre of expert resources in various fields of technical assistance.
• Developing strong relationships and partnerships with area community colleges to jointly provide manufacturers with grant-funded technical assistance and training projects.
• Compiling and documenting IW available service offerings, ensuring IW has standard work approaches to proposals and contracting.
• Developing internal project management accounting tools to ensure project costing was clear, predictable, and in the black.
• Developing best practices in project development and management, including documenting current state, developing extensive Lean implementation projects, and ensuring that project outcomes were captured and reported.
• Providing IW with best practices in NIST MEP survey results attainment.
• Leading on sector development especially in wood products. In this arena, his professional contributions are diverse, covering areas such as beneficial re-use of recyclable materials, wood products manufacturing, and wood waste processing, alternative non-wood paper fiber sources, wastewater and bio solids treatment, food processing, specialty chemicals, fertilizers, and ceramics. He developed, managed, and compiled “Manual for Best Practices in Wood Waste Recycling”.
• Delivering always on Impact Washington survey results and gaining return business.

Impact Washington has been lucky to depend on him for consistent results and satisfied and retained clients for over 20 years.  Colleague Sarah Stuart had this to say:  “As one of our all-time top performers, Krassimir has saved the day many times.  When times were especially tough, we greatly appreciated this.  We probably have not expressed our gratitude well enough.”

An example of Krassimir project work is local manufacturer Hydra Pro, a Seattle-based company that makes AP12C monogrammed marine and offshore cranes for the oil and gas industry, ship cranes, hose handling cranes, subsea cranes, and dock cranes.

Hydra Pro had problems with late deliveries and low margins. Company president Ed Romberg had read about Toyota Production methods and saw them as a way forward. Ramberg contacted Impact Washington, a NIST MEP affiliate, for assistance.

Working with South Seattle Community College, Krassimir crafted a funding package that would allow Hydra Pro to receive Lean Training and use those methods to improve. Process improvement specialists were brought in to train company employees and lead Kaizen events. Several Hydra Pro employees were trained to spot and eliminate waste in their processes and increase the amount of value-added time to every operation. As a result of Impact Washington’s assistance, the company reduced inventory by 67% and changed purchasing practices. Now, they only purchase what they need for specific projects. Margins have also improved, along with on-time deliveries.

The results speak to Krassimir’s dedication and expertise. Inventory was reduced from $1.2M to $400,000 and on-time delivery went from 101 to 38 days.

“Our goal is to provide a trusted advisor for our clients. Not a salesperson who will offer a menu of product offerings for a price. A senior, highly experienced manufacturing professional who can learn about the clients’ strengths, weaknesses, and goals to help direct them to improved performance.

Krassimir has been the best at delivering for our clients over a 20 year career. Being the best for a year or two is something to be proud of. Being the best over a 20 year time period is extraordinary, no matter what you do.

He has worked with hundreds of companies in his time with us and we look forward to his continued leadership at Impact Washington!” said Loren Lyon, President of Impact Washington.

Krassimir holds a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering and the title, “European Engineer”. He is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt.

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