Performance assessment of multi-variate control with minimum variance control as the benchmark requires an interactor matrix to filter the closed-loop Output. This is to transfer the coordinate of the original variables into a new one in order to identify the control invariant disturbance dynamics from the first few terms of the closed-loop output Markov parameters. There has been a great deal of interest to simplify this approach, in particular, to find methods that do not need the interactor matrix. With this motivation, this paper explores alternative solutions to multi-variate control performance assessment problems. In particular, we will consider two practical scenarios: (1) known time delays between each pair of inputs and outputs, (2) no a priori knowledge about the process model or time delays at all. Solutions to these two scenarios are proposed. Two data-driven algorithms based on subspace approach are derived for the calculation of performance measures. Several examples illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approaches. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.