An efficient simplified method is proposed for the time domain design of industrial proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers and lead-lag compensators for high order single input single output (SISO) systems. The proposed analytical method requires no trial error steps for a lead-lag compensator design in the time domain by using the root-locus method. A practical PID controller design method was obtained based on the corresponding lead-lag compensator to give a required time-domain specification. Simulation studies were carried out to illustrate the control performance of the controllers by the proposed method. The proposed PID controller and lead-lag compensator directly satisfied time domain control specifications such as damping ratio, maximum overshoot, settling time and steady sate error without trial and error steps. The suggested algorithm can easily be integrated with a toolbox in commercial software such as Matlab.