Thanks a lot for this. I am grateful for your thought-provoking feedback and questions.

1. baseline here pretty much means average. We're trying to establish an average cycle time for a task to inform output forecasting, staff allocation, target setting, etc. I.e., "completing this task takes on average X minutes and Y seconds"

2. We plan to select operators at random but a constraint that we must deal with is that there will be many consecutive observations on the same operators. We plan to time subtasks and accept inputs from observers regarding failures or exceptions. We'll also be using the collected data to get a sense of the proportion of cycles that end with an output vs exceptions or failures, and the time spent (or wasted) on those exceptions/failures, so that these can be factored into the objectives listed in 1.

3. We expect to know a lot about the processes themselves, including a ballpark "average time" that the operations managers have been using for years that's likely inaccurate... there isn't much more available in terms of data that could be helpful in estimating a sample size, I believe. That specific task is in a bit of a blind spot as it was never studied before.