This paper discusses alternative methods for batch process monitoring. Two alternative methods are investigated and compared to an existing one (the benchmark). A description of the models is given and the performance is discussed by means of fault detection performance indices. The performance indices used are the overall type I error and the action signal time. In order to evaluate the performance of the models in terms of the overall type I error and action signal time, six different batch process data sets have been used. The data sets comprise four industrial data sets, one simulated data set and a laboratory spectral data set. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.