In a conventional rule based fuzzy control system, the rules are of the following form: if (condition) then (action), and all rules are essentially in a random order. The number of rules increases exponentially as the number of the system variables, on which the fuzzy rules are based, is increased. In this paper, the rules are structured in a hierarchical way so that the total number of rules will be a linear function of the system variables. The hierarchical fuzzy control algorithm developed in this paper is applied to control the feedwater flow to a steam generator of a power plant. The simulation results show that the hierarchical fuzzy controller yields superior performance over the conventional PID controller.