A control system for machinery, such as carding machinery in the textile industry, which has a plurality of controlf- able drives to different components (such, in the case of carding machinery, as a scribbler and a carder with workers and a condenser and a waste fan), has manually adjustable control means for each drive by which the machinery may be set up to produce a given product. A computer-operated visual display unit (VDU) displays the actual drive states of the various drives, the computer being programmed to display, identify, store and recall any given set of drive states as a recipe.