Fuzzy control is a type of knowledge‐based system. Its reasoning process is based on fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory. The robustness and reliability of fuzzy control have been demonstrated in many cases, such as process control. However, fuzzy control usually demands a lot of computation time. In order to alleviate this restraint, a simplified fuzzy controller is developed for the purpose of real‐time control. It will be shown that the simplified fuzzy controller is a PID cotnroller plus a certain amount of nonlinearity. Under certain conditions, the simplified fuzzy controller reduces to a linear PID controller. Furthermore, a self‐organizing control based on the simplified fuzzy controller is also developed. Finally, a motion control example is used to illustrate the developments. The results show that, without degrading the performance, the simplified fuzzy control is about two hundred times faster than the conventional fuzzy control.