In this paper, a new technique is presented which enables the relative performance of both single and multiple loop control systems to be determined. The technique is based on the relative variance index technique which has been proposed recently for monitoring single loop control systems. This technique provides a control loop performance metric that considers the performance of the control system relative to both minimum variance and open-loop control. A major limitation with this technique is that it requires a highly restrictive assumption to be made regarding the structure of the disturbance to the process and the extension of the technique to multiple loop systems is not straight forward. The technique proposed in this paper does not require any assumptions to be made regarding the structure of the disturbance and can be extended to Multiple loop situations with relative ease. The ability of the proposed technique to assess the performance of controllers applied to two Simulated systems and also an industrial process is examined and it is shown that the proposed approach is superior to alternative techniques. A further benefit of the proposed technique is that it is able to provide an estimate of the potential improvement to the performance of the control loop that is achievable if the control system is retuned or redesigned. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.