Thermally-induced errors originating from machine tool errors have received significant attention recently because high speed and precise machining is now the principal trend in manufacturing proce sses using CNC machine tools. Since the thermal error model is generally a function of temperature, the thermal error compensation system contains temperature sensors with the same number of temperature variables. The minimization of the number of variables in the thermal error model can affect the economical efficiency and the possibility of unexpected sensor fault in a error compensation system. This paper presents a thermal error model with minimum number of variables using a fuzzy logic strategy. The proposed method using a fuzzy logic strategy does not require any information about the characteristics of the plant contrary to numerical analysis techniques, but the developed thermal error model guarantees good prediction performance. The proposed modeling method can also be applied to any type of CNC machine tool if a combination of the possible input variables is determined because the error model parameters are only calculated mathematically-based on the number of temperature variables.