I use workflow to automate most of my industry and am pretty happy about it. I have all furniture I use set to range 3-5, and use planning mode to mass place it, and then it works out so after a while everything is done without annoying warnings. For food and drink I just set a pretty big number and then I don't worry about it anymore. Soap is automated by setting ash and lye to 3-5, soap a bit higher. I automate metal bars at around 50 and bolts at 100, and then use the manager to get armor and weapons as needed, I guess I could overproduce them as well.
However, I don't really get the clothing industry working without massive cancellation spam. Main problem is the (imho stupid) forced distinction between silk, cloth, and yarn, so I ask for 200 thread (which can be created from all three) and then X cloth of each type, and put jobs in separately for silk/yarn/cloth cloaks, mittens, socks, and trousers. This seems to solve the supply problem, but I get spam all the time when e.g. I run low on socks, the cloth sock unsuspends, but there is no cloth as there is so much yarn that no cloth or plant thread was needed. This completely fills my announcement log, making it nearly useless.
I guess I could specialize on cloth only, not buy any yarn and not collect any silk, but it would be nicer to offer a mix of clothing to my dwarves.
Also, I've not bothered with dyeing yet since it doesn't work yet without.
How do other people automate the clothing industry?