Lloyd E. Qually was a pioneer in the development of productivity improvement auxiliary equipment for the plastics injection molding industry.

Qually grew up in Seneca, Illinois. During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy, where he received training with large refrigeration equipment, and afterward he worked for Air Comfort Corporation/Temperature Equipment Corporation, a Carrier-owned heating and air conditioner contractor/distributor in Chicago. He held the positions of Service Manager, Parts Sales Manager, and Equipment Sales Manager, in which capacity he became one of the first Manufacturer's Representatives in the plastics industry for Whitlock Inc. and Sterling Corporation.

In 1959 Qually and Charles E. Waters (Chief Engineer at Air Comfort Corporation) formed Application Engineering Corp. (now AEC Inc.) to develop water and energy conservation equipment for the plastics injection molding industry. The two entrepreneurs staked all their personal assets on the business and originally worked out of a friend's garage. Their work paid off. In 1967 they acquired Whitlock Inc., a material handling, blending and dying manufacturer. In 1978 they acquired Nelmor Inc., a manufacturer of granulator machines. Qually and waters built their company into a worldwide manufacturer of auxiliary productivity improvement equipment for the plastics industry. Qually was vice president of AEC until his retirement in 1976.

AEC first developed the heat pump chiller, which cooled the injection molding machine and recaptured the heat for supplemental plant space heating. They then developed a portable water chiller for cooling individual molds in the injection molding machine. They also developed the design parameters and engineering systems for re-circulating the cooling water for the injection molding machine hydraulics, and developed the Blown Film Cooler for providing cold air to the air ring of the blown film extruder to improve the productivity of the process. In the 1960s Qually and Waters were the first to recognize that the mold used in the injection molding process was a heat exchanger, and could be analyzed using basic heat transfer principles to improve molding quality and productivity. They established and funded a research study with the University of Illinois at the Chicago Circle Campus, and developed and marketed the "Mold Analysis" (later called MOLDCOOL) program to do this. The analysis was originally done manually; later it was computerized and then incorporated into a CAD program to make the program a more valuable tool.