A good example is the control of a clothes washing machine.
each state continues until the condition to go to another state happens. The states do not have to be in order and the conditions do not have to be simple.

example

state 1 : fill
if full switch goto state 2
state 2 : wash
if time = 0 goto state 3
state 3 : spin
drain
if empty goto idle
if time = 0 goto idle

in C this can be do by calling a switch statement at a regular interval.