The PID controller is one of the most popular devices for control systems and the adjustment of its parameters has been generally accomplished by semi-empirical rules and has been considered only in the view of improvement of the control performance. But in modern control theory, a quadratic form is introduced as a criterion function which considers not only to improve quality of control but also to save energy required for the control. In this paper, authors propose a method of the parameter adjustment of the PID controller by means of maximum principle minimizing the quadratic criterion function and establish a link between the conventional parameter adjustment method and the technique of the modern optimal control theory in the design of a PID controller.