Terry Neimeyer was vacationing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina when Hurricane Diana devastated the region in 1984. Neimeyer, then executive vice president of the consulting engineering firm now known as KCI Technologies Inc., was impressed to see a travel companion charting the hurricane’s path with a personal computer and spreadsheet software Lotus 1-2-3. “I thought to myself, ‘Gosh, this thing is just going to revolutionize word processing, spreadsheets and engineering,’” says Neimeyer, who now is KCI’s CEO.
Neimeyer’s epiphany led the multidisciplined firm to a new focus on advanced technology. KCI invested in PCs to replace existing “dumb terminals” connected to a VAX mainframe “the size of most people’s bedrooms,” Neimeyer says. The move positioned KCI well for the modern era of CAD, born in 1987 with the groundbreaking 3D program called Pro/ENGINEER. The firm also had the foresight to rename itself KCI Technologies in 1991, a few years before the tech boom.