This thread is over two years old. Bumping it for the purpose of a very wordy "me too" is not desirable behavior here.
And if hanni79 had made a new thread about this we would have been complaining "Use search function! Necroing topics is favored over new thread of the very same subject!"
But yes, I totally support this idea. Currently my jewelers are spending most of their life idle since I'm usually too busy to check out if they have run out of the repeated orders.
Now, there is the problem of cutting stones, which was added by one of the later releases. Perhaps the order "Cut Any Gem" should use only the materials that have the tag [IS_GEM]? This way the jewelers won't accidentally run through the boulder reserves (especially ores, since those can be cut as well).
Also, the idea could be extended to encrust as well. After all, the same problem exists in it as well. This way managing the gem industry would become much more bearable and perhaps even useful.
Of course, this mechanism can be introduced already by modding. You can make a new reaction that requires any gem as reagent and produces a cut gem based on the material of reagent. You can also make the reaction automatic with [AUTOMATIC] token in the reaction. Unfortunately there are two drawbacks in this method: you can't use jeweler's workshop for the reaction and you can't get large gems from the reaction unless you add it as second product. If you do the chance of getting large gem is fixed, not based on the skill of the dwarf. Encrusting can't be automated in this way AFAIK.