Owing to the fast time-varying characteristics, the temperature control for draw-texturing-yarn (DTY) machine has higher technical difficulties and results in challenges for system energy optimization. To address the matter, a self-tuning proportionalintegral-derivative-(ST-PID-) based temperature control method is proposed. Referring to the technical procedures of DTY machine, a thermodynamic model is set up. Then, a ST-PID minimum phase control system is constructed by the pole-point placement method. Subsequently, an artificial neural network based forgetting factor searching (ANN-FFS) algorithm is developed to optimize the system parameter identification. The numerical cases show that the proposed ANN-FFS algorithm can improve the parameter identification process, and the average identifying efficiency ( > 15) can increase by more than 50%; compared with the fuzzy PID controller, the proposed ST-PID method can increase the control accuracy nearly 3 times for the static temperature ascending. The experimental results prove that the proposed ST-PID method has better abilities of characteristics tracing and antiinterference and can restrain the temperature fluctuation caused by objective switching and the factual control accuracy reaches 3 times that of fuzzy PID method.