This paper presents initial work to develop a novel, mathematical technique that is capable of generating a stamping sequence automatically in the design of progressive stamping dies. A graph is used to represent a stamping part and define the relationships between its stamping features. These stamping features are then clustered into workstation sets using a graph colouring algorithm. Next, the sets are ordered in order to determine an optimal sequence of workstations. The objective function for optimization is ‘minimization of the torque difference between two sides of the progressive die’.