Building a Digital Foundation for Textile Color Management

Customer Stories / Textile and Apparel

Building a Digital Foundation for Textile Color Management

Yangzi Wool Spinning needed a more structured, transparent workflow: less reliance on fragmented communication, better access to historical color data, and a more reliable foundation for decision-making.

With TLM, laboratory and production teams gained a centralized platform for managing color information and process records—making it easier to organize recipes, monitor development progress, and maintain consistent standards across projects.
Digitizing these workflow steps improved operational visibility and created a more efficient environment for color development and approval.

Yangzi Wool Spinning Advances Quality and Efficiency with Datacolor Textile Lab Manager

 

As textile supply chains grow more complex, manufacturers face mounting pressure to deliver consistent color quality while improving efficiency, traceability, and cross-team collaboration. For Yangzi Wool Spinning, maintaining high standards in yarn color development called for a more connected, data-driven approach—one the company found in Datacolor Textile Lab Manager (TLM).

TLM modernized the company’s color management workflow and standardized laboratory operations around a smarter, more intelligent process:

● TLM is a lightweight, web-based application that supports color measurement and matching across multiple devices, including phones, tablets, and desktops. Staff can adjust formulas anytime, anywhere, and send them to the dispenser with a single click—distributing workload efficiently and maximizing dispenser utilization.

● TLM tracks task progress and automatically generates real-time reports on employee capacity, proofing timeouts, and flow numbers. Every operation is archived for full traceability, giving managers clear visibility into sampling efficiency and tighter control over costs and operations.

● TLM features a flexible, open integration architecture built for high-efficiency collaboration across the lab. It receives production and testing tasks directly and supports two-way synchronization of recipes and approval samples, ensuring seamless data flow and true process closure. By eliminating manual workarounds and “human shortcuts,” TLM acts as the digital nervous system of the dyehouse lab—connecting people, data, and decisions in one reliable, automated loop.

By embedding digital color data into daily workflows, Yangzi Wool Spinning strengthened team communication, streamlined recipe and sample management, and built lasting confidence in color consistency across production.

TLM’s visual, graphical interface is intuitive enough that even new employees pick it up quickly. At the same time, it captures our senior technicians’ recipe adjustments in real time, turning tacit expertise into a digital asset for the company. Using big data and AI, TLM continuously refines our dyeing recipe data and recommends optimal formulas, reducing reliance on individual experience. These capabilities are essential for our new Vietnam facility and other overseas bases that lack mature technical teams, and they will be central to our broader intelligent transformation.

Song Renhua, Production Manager, Yangzi Spinning

Improving Efficiency and Strengthening Competitive Advantage

 

TLM has dramatically improved our sampling and color matching efficiency—we now hit the target color in just one or two tries. For customers demanding small batches, fast delivery, and high quality, TLM has been pivotal in bringing wool dyeing closer to the speed of strand dyeing. By producing slub dyeing formulas directly in a single run, it shortens the sampling cycle and accelerates overall delivery.
Under our LT2-Strip Dyeing Two-Week Rapid Delivery program, 30 S/2 yarn delivery has dropped to 5.9 days and 48-count yarn to under 7.1 days. With this process re-engineering, we’re now extending the two-week delivery standard to more complex 60 S/2 yarn varieties.

TLM simplified cross-departmental communication and cut the time needed to access and verify color information. Teams could quickly retrieve historical records, compare data, and track development progress with greater accuracy

The platform also standardized laboratory practices and improved traceability throughout the workflow, helping Yangzi Wool Spinning reduce rework, improve responsiveness, and strengthen process control.

In addition, Yangzi Spinning’s custom-developed CCG module based on TLM has successfully realized the uniform preparation of global color codes within the German Nanmao Group. Song Renhua said that based on the advantages of this application, there is no need to repeatedly send samples for confirmation within the group, which significantly improves the efficiency of cross-regional collaboration and reduces communication and logistics costs.

 

 

Beyond operational gains, Yangzi Wool Spinning has built a stronger digital foundation for future growth. Its custom-developed CCG module, built on TLM, now standardizes global color codes across the German Nanmao Group—eliminating the need for repeated sample confirmations between sites and cutting both communication overhead and logistics costs.

According to Song Renhua, this has significantly improved cross-regional collaboration. With more reliable color data and greater workflow transparency, teams are better equipped to meet customer requirements, manage production complexity, and uphold quality standards as market demands evolve.

Yangzi Wool Spinning continues to advance its digital color management capabilities with Datacolor, supporting greater consistency, efficiency, and long-term competitiveness.

Building on TLM’s success in the laboratory, Datacolor is now extending the platform to the production floor: the upcoming TPM production management software will create a full-chain color management system spanning laboratory sampling through production floor —delivering a more complete, more practical intelligent solution for dyeing and finishing operations across the industry.

Discover digital color control at every step of the process.

Talk to a Color Expert

Related Products

Learn more about other Datacolor color management solutions for the automotive industry.

Datacolor Spectro 1000 benchtop spectrophotometer.

Spectro 1000 Family

Spectro 1000 delivers the highest precision in Datacolor’s fleet of benchtop Spectrophotometers and is designed for high efficiency and confidence in color formulation and quality control.

AI-Enabled Lab Workflow Software: Textile Lab Manager

The integrated data exchange system minimizes handwriting errors, simplifies processes and reduces costs for you.

• Customer Stories •

Read More Stories from Customers Like You

Success comes in different forms for different clients. Discover more ways Datacolor delivers. See More Stories ›

Interview with Zhimu | Partnering with Delta Color to create a low-carbon, intelligent “color supply chain” benchmark

Paint and Coatings
Airplane with red and black stripes

Datacolor’s Unmatched Accuracy Drives Product Innovation at Pison Stream Solutions

Other industries
cans-of-paint

PPG Accelerates Color Matching via Automation

Paint and Coatings
Green sofa with coordinated green painted wall

Datacolor partners with Nippon Paint to bring more life to home décor

Paint and Coatings
Four people seated together at a conference table.

Bring Ideas to Life with Color Management

When data meets color, inspiration meets results.

Connect with a Color Expert