Textile testing devices include a variety of different devices with a wide range of measuring and testing methods. These devices measure different material properties e.g. fibres, rovings or yarns. Basic examples include the maximum elongation and force, the shrinkage, crimp and crimp stability of a fibre or yarn.

The scope of this specification is focused on laboratory and at line tests of e.g. fibres, rovings, slivers, yarns and tapes or similar materials. These may include man-made and natural staple fibres as well as staple fibre yarns, filament yarns, textured yarns and technical yarns.

Textile testing devices are used, for example, in research institutes, quality control laboratories or for production control in industrial environments. In production control in particular, the processes are often highly digitalized and automated. Central Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are used to control which of the produced packages are to be sent to the testing device for spot checks, which material properties are tested and how many tests are performed. Finally, the results of the TTD are retrieved by the MES for further usage, such as storage and further analysis.

To organize the scheduling of these jobs, handling the recipes for the planned measurements and providing the results are the main processes for which this specification is intended.

The configuration of the measurements and the format of the results differ depending on the manufacturer or the type of testing device. To create a generic interface, it is hence necessary to abstract common patterns and minimize reference to local information on the TTD that are out of the scope of this specification. Making good use of the specification requires an understanding of this model. It will be touched only briefly in this section, more details can be found in Annex B.