The purchase price of commercially available software varies widely. Obviously, the total
cost of software is very different from the purchase price. In many cases, a $500 SPC
package is really a $10,000 package when we take into account the total costs of making
the package work correctly in the intended application. It is also relatively easy to establish
control charts with most of the popular spreadsheet software packages. However, it
may be difficult to integrate those spreadsheet control charts into the overall manufacturing
database or other business systems.