Strategy for combinging two tables

[ndenaro]

I have been working on this project for a while now and I just can’t seem to find the best way to make it work. If this question really isn’t specific enough for this forum then I apologize. I will give a basic algorithm in words of what I need to accomplish with this project. I will provide examples of data where available. If you think that any steps are out of order, I am open to suggestions.

The first thing that I need to do is to load in data from another source on a shared drive. The data will be refreshed every week or every month and will change in length. The LOAD sheet of the file example.xls shows the format of the data to be loaded. I have kept the general form but removed most of the information except what I am concerned with (item, quantity, and due date). So far I have been working with the import data function but again I am open to new suggestions.

I also have another list which contains ALL items and a list of processes that each item goes through and the time which it takes (this list does not change). Every item on the orders list that I load will be found in this table with its processes and times. Everything in this table is not on the other hand going to be found on the orders list, this table contains all parts regardless of if there are orders for them or not. The REFERENCE sheet in the example.xls file is representative of this table.

So what I need to accomplish is to create a table from these two tables which ultimately displays the total time spent on each operation per month for a specific time period, call it six months. This is a total of the times it takes to complete the operations on each different item on the orders list with a due date within the next six months. I will fabricate an example in the FINAL sheet of example.xls of what the ideal finished product would look like. The form does not matter as much to me as long as it contains the data that I am interested in.

Thank you so much for any help you can provide, and let me know if I can make anything more clear.