It's true that the total amount of time it takes to process a collection
varies. But sometimes one is in a position to come up with some sort of
general estimate, because a supervisor is asking for a processing plan, etc.

There are some articles out there in the professional literature.

"Rates of Processing Manuscripts and Archives", by Karen T. Lynch and Thoms
E. Lynch, Midwestern Archivist, vol. 7, no.1, 1982.

"Beneficial Shocks: The Place of Processing-Cost Analysis in Archival
Administration" American Archivist, vol. 58, no. 1, Winter 1995 (though it
focuses on cost, in doing this it discusses the length of time it takes to
process.)

Perhaps others know of other citations. You could search the database
"Library Literature" to come up with others.

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