I've seen and created ksh (Korn shell) scripts used in multiple ways in a DW environment, mostly having to do with the ETL process. For example .ksh scripts are called by a scheduler (Autosys, Maestro, etc) to execute SQL (and/or PL/SQL code for Oracle) packages in a batch process. These scripts can provide date/time stamping, auditing, and error checking/handling.
If you are using Informatica (or most ETL tools) they usually have a built-in scheduler and error/audit logs so I'm not sure of the usefulness of unix scripts in that area, unless you are only using Informatica for one part of the DW process and scripting for another? I know at my last job I was required to create file to staging loads in Informatica, but staging to target loads were created with Teradata BTEQ scripts called from ksh scripts.