The research on control loop performance monitoring and diagnostics has been and remains to be one of the most active research areas in process control community. Despite of numerous developments, it remains as a considerably challenging problem to obtain a minimum variance control benchmark from routine operating data for multivariable process since the solution relies On the interactor matrix (or inverse time delay matrix). Knowing the interactor matrix is tantamount to knowing a complete knowledge of process models that are either not available or not accurate enough for a meaningful calculation of the benchmark. However, the order of an interactor matrix (OIM) for a multivariable process, a scalar measure of multivariate time delay, is a relatively simple parameter to know or estimate a priori. This paper investigates the possibility to estimate a suboptimal multivariate control benchmark from routine operating data if the OIM is available. The relation between this suboptimal benchmark and the true multivariate minimum variance control benchmark is investigated. Analytical expressions for the lower and upper bounds of the true multivariate minimum variance are derived. Although not minimum variance control, this benchmark answers important practical questions like "at least how much potential of the improvement does the control have by tuning or redesigning?" It is further shown that the proposed suboptimal benchmark is achievable by a practical control provided that, the system of interest is minimum phase. Simulation examples illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.