This paper presents a new simplified approach for the design of dead time compensators for processes with dead time. The approach is based on a modified structure of the Smith predictor that allows to isolate the disturbance and set-point responses and thereby, providing two-degree-of-freedom control scheme. The proposed structure is easy to analyze and tune. Using an estimation of the dead time and process model of the plant, the proposed compensator has only two tuning parameters that determine the closed-loop performance and robustness. In order to evaluate the proposed compensator, a comparative analysis of robustness with the most recent algorithm proposed in the literature is presented. To demonstrate its applicability to real processes, the method is evaluated on a pilot plant. © 2011 Zhejiang University.