Rapid wholesale changes can frustrate your employees or cause them to fear they won't be able to adapt. A sudden change can also significantly reduce productivity due to the "learning curve" effect. Draw a precedence diagram. The first step is to identify the activities involved in the production process and the order in which the activities are undertaken. Once identified, define their relationship to each other, then consider whether it is a serial relationship, i.e. activities that begin only after other activities have been completed. However, the execution of other tasks can be totally independent and therefore have a parallel relationship. The precedence diagram helps show dependencies between tasks. Determine the cycle time for the line. For a particular line process the company would like to achieve a desired production rate to meet expected demand. It is usually expressed in work items per period of time, for example 20 parts per hour, meaning every three minutes a part must leave the system. Cycle time represents the longest time a part can spend in each of them