Recently, a modified Smith predictor with a prefilter has been proposed for first-order stable and integrating processes with time delay. The paper is a further investigation on the empirical method. In this paper, an optimal design procedure is developed for the scheme. With respect to the proposed controller and corresponding processes with time delay, the closed-loop time domain responses are estimated quantitatively. The robustness of the closed-loop system is analyzed. Finally, a simple tuning rule is proposed, which allows to tune the controller for desired time domain properties such as overshoot and rise time, or frequency domain criteria such as stability margin and bandwidth. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.