The paper suggests design methods for reconfigurable hierarchical finite state machines (RHFSM), which possess two following important features: (1) they enable the control algorithms to be divided in modules providing direct support for “divide and conquer” strategy; (2) they allow for static and dynamic reconfiguration. Run-time reconfiguration permits virtual control systems to be constructed, including systems that are more complex than capabilities of available hardware. It is shown that RHFSM can be synthesised from specification in form of hierarchical graph-schemes with the aid of the considered in the paper VHDL templates. The results of experiments show correctness of the proposed methods and their applicability for the design of engineering systems.