An industrial fed-batch fermentation process forms the basis of a study that illustrates the development and use of local models for the construction of a performance monitoring scheme. Linear models are initially built for different operating regions within the batch using Dynamic Partial Least Squares (DPLS) to capture the underlying process dynamics. The local models are then pieced together and a global model developed based on the latent variable scores. A comparison with a global non-linear quadratic DPLS model is then made prior to using the latent variable scores from the local models to build a nominal process representation.