Selecting the best combination of pre-processing and modeling methodologies is a critical activity while building soft sensors from spectroscopic Process Analytical Technology data. To help practitioners in this task, a framework for Soft Sensor Development, Assessment and Comparison (SS-DAC) is proposed. By applying SS-DAC, the following goals are achieved: the models' parameters are set to optimal performance; the models' predictive performance is statistically compared against each other; the statistical analyses are summarized through graphical displays. SS-DAC is designed to accommodate different pre-processing and modeling methodologies, and it can be applied to any type of linear and nonlinear models. To exemplify the application of SS-DAC, 13 pre-processing and three modeling methodologies were compared on three real case studies over a total of 13 response properties. For all examples, SS-DAC provided useful insights on the best subset of models and highlighted trends on the impacts of the different pre-processing and modeling methodologies. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.