Independent component analysis (ICA) has been applied for non-Gaussian multivariate statistical process monitoring (MSPM) for several years. As the independent components do not satisfy the multivariate Gaussian distribution, a missed alarm occurs when monitoring with traditional statistics. In this paper, we propose a Gaussian distribution transformation (GDT)-based monitoring method. Independent components are first transformed into approximate Gaussian distributions through the proposed nonlinear mapping. Then, we propose new statistics and their control limits to reduce missed alarms. The proposed method is particularly suitable for slight magnitude fault and early-stage fault detection. The ratio part of the area above the curve (RPAAC) is developed to evaluate the performance in fault detection. The experimental results from a synthetic example show the effectiveness of our proposed method. We also apply our method to monitor an electrical fused magnesia furnace (EFMF), and eruption and furnace wall melt faults can be detected in time. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.