Al,

>>In this instance, the spreadsheets were templates that were being populated with data and printed. These were diagrams used in accordance with our manufacturing process known as Warping. The format of the output was specified by the user's. One of the conditions, BTW was the most of the information had to be horizontally rather than vertically. This was one of the requirements that led to using a spreadsheet. Namely, this could be specified in the template.
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>>Since that time, the server class has been modified to allow us to pull data from spreadsheets to populate tables. Most of the information is in cross-tables and can easily exceed 50,000 records. We worked with the individual plant financial system managers (who maintain this information for costing purposes) to create a uniform layout for each of the 5 manufacturing facilities my group works with.
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>>This process was originally handled via DDE, but since Lotus beginning with 1-2-3 97 no longer supported it, this change was required.
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>>The system that this feeds generates costing information. Previously, it was done manually and took approximately one hour per estimate. Since the introduction of the system (1993 or 94), I think the record number of estimates processed by one person is in excess of 200.
>
>So, if I read you right, this process speeds up the creation of estimates (I assume you mean 200/day(?) rather than 1 per hour), and provides information necessary for production if/when the estimate becomes a job?

Exactly. It's not hard to see how this improvement is gained given the number of lookups and calculations required.