A diagnostic rule-base design method for enhancing fault detection and isolation performance of multiple obsever based fault detection isolation schemes (FIDS) is presented. The diagnostic rule-base has a hierarchical framework to perform detection and isolation of faults of interest, and diagnosis of process faults. The decision unit comprises a rule base and a fuzzy inference engine and removes some difficulties of conventional decision unit which includes crisp logic with threshold values. Emphasis is placed on the design and evaluation methods of the diagnostic rult-base. The suggested scheme is applied to the FDIS design for a DC motor driven centrifugal pump system.