This paper illustrates the effect of stiction in actuators on closed loop performance and the importance of techniques, to be incorporated in the monitoring system, for automatic detection of the onset of this phenomenon. Three different techniques are compared on the basis of simulation by means of stiction models and it is shown how loop variables are affected by stiction parameters and by process characteristics. A major finding is that every technique has an uncertainty region where no decision can be taken in the absence of further information about the process. the application on industrial data, recorded on loops affected by stiction during routine plant operation, allows to confirm this result and to assess relative efficiency of the techniques. A simple test to be performed directly on the plant is also proposed to solve the remaining uncertain cases. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.