In order to detect abnormal events at different scales, a number of multiscale multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) approaches which combine a multivariate linear projection model with multiresolution analysis have been suggested. In this paper, a new nonlinear multiscale-MSPC method is proposed to address multivariate process performance monitoring and in particular fault diagnostics in nonlinear processes. A kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) model, which not only captures nonlinear relationships between variables but also reduces the dimensionality of the data, is built with the reconstructed data obtained by performing wavelet transform and inverse wavelet transform sequentially on measured data. A guideline is given for both off-line and on-line implementations of the approach. Two monitoring statistics used in multiscale KPCA-based process monitoring are used for fault detection. Furthermore, variable contributions to monitoring statistics are also derived by calculating the derivative of the monitoring statistics with respect to the variables. An intensive simulation study on a continuous stirred tank reactor process and a comparison of the proposed approach with several existing methods in terms of false alarm rate, missed alarm rate and detection delay, demonstrate that the proposed method for detecting and identifying faults outperforms current approaches. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.