The operations associated with stamping are blanking, piercing, forming, and drawing.

These operations are done with dedicated tooling also known as hard tooling. This type of tooling is used to make high volume parts of one configuration of part design. (By contrast, soft tooling is used in processes such as CNC turret presses, laser profilers and press brakes). All these operations can be done either at a single die station or multiple die stations — performing a progression of operations, known as a progressive die.