Tom, I'm not sure how much you could make out of that script that I sent you, but since you asked about what we do with our scripts, here's what we do with the one I sent:
Nearly all of our jobs are processed with that script - tens of thousands of images a year. It has the ability to save presets, so the user can change the information and way the image is processing by just clicking on a drop down menu. It creates a border around our images in which we can then have the script place company logo, caveats, and pull metadata from the image and create text blocks in the border. We shoot a lot of electronic parts that come bar coded. We have scanners that scan the bar code and create a text file. The script can then take that text file and populate custom metadata fields in each image. That information then can be placed in the image's border for a description. The script will also create an XML file of the RAW data, that our database uses to populate its fields. The script can then make multi page PDFs from all the files from the current job, formatting the contact sheets with our group's corporate banner. The script also save a variety of file types: Two unformatted high res images can be save in different locations for backup purposes, high and low res images with the formatting, and a gif for the database thumbnail.
When CS6 was released, I arranged to have Brian O'Neil Hughes and Sharad Mangalick come out to give a demo. Brian was going to do a bit on automating PS, until he saw what we were doing all ready. We gave them both a tour of our factory, so you might want to check with them to see what they thought of our workflow.