Nesting in the leather industry is the problem of placing a set of irregularly shaped pieces known as templates on a plane irregularly shaped surface, such that no templates overlap and that the trim loss produced when cutting out the templates is minimised. Manual nesting process has many shortcomings that results in low productivity. In the mass manufacture of leather furniture, saving of materials is very important as material cost is the major portion of the overall production cost. By making use of automation, efficient nesting and cutting productivity is achieved. This paper discusses the manual as well as the automated processes of nesting and cutting for leather furniture production. It was found that a very high material utilization can be achieved through the automation of nesting and cutting processes.