rajeshwari.ravindra

SMART stands for Specific,Measurable,achievable,relevant and timebound. Ideally for any Six sigma projects we just start the project with a problem statement without much information about the root causes and solutions.
When we set a project goal this would be based on historical data and we can use statistical ways of arriving at the goal or understand what the customer is looking for in terms of the goal and then evaluate the possibility of meeting the same, we can do this by looking at the process capability, has the team been able to deliver the goal at least once historically then it is definitely an achievable target.
 Process Entitlement would then help us set up an achievable goal.
We can look through different ways to baseline target based on the type of data..
Identify data type if it is discrete or continuous Identify the  metric requirement (Larger the better or smaller the better) Check stability and normality for continuous data and for discrete check the stability Set up goal with defined confidence level based on the different tests that would be using which is determined based on step 3 outcome  
We can also leverage Bench marking data available – Based on the metric and type of industry what is the median or best in class performance for competitors. If the performance is too low we should aim at incremental improvement to median competitor performance and then improve to best in class performance. Now based on where we would want to reach we should look at either process improvement or process redesign