There is provided an operation control method for an industrial robot having a plurality of joints, cooperation of these joints allowing a hand or an end effector attached to the hand to perform necessary operation comprising the steps of representing a position and orientation of a hand effecting point relatively determined with respect to the hand or the end effector by a generalized coordinate system suitable for describing the task, deriving respective displacement values of the plurality of joints corresponding to the position and orientation information by using means such as computation, and making the hand effecting point perform necessary operation. For at least one joint among the plurality of joints, displacement is approximately derived by using approximate solution. For remaining joint among the plurality of joints satisfying a parameter or parameters to be controlled especially accurately among the position or position and orientation of the hand effecting point, strict solutions are derived by using the approximate solution of the above described at least one joint. the operation of the hand effecting point is thus controlled.